The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

I’m listening to all of David Bowie’s studio albums while we’re all mostly staying inside. My thoughts about David Bowie and Space Oddity are here. The Man Who Sold The World is here. Hunky Dory is here.

Everyone knows The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars. Even if they haven’t listened to all of it, most people with at least a passing familiarity with David Bowie know of its existence. It’s also one of the only Bowie albums I’ve listened to all the way through before this exercise.

It’s a lot more refined than any of its predecessors. All the songs are fully formed. It’s not an experimental album (though we’ll get to that in a few weeks!). It’s both the sum total of Bowie’s prior albums — quiet moments, loud guitars when appropriate, some triumphant choruses — but it’s also different than what came before.

“Five Years” makes sure that our rock n’ roll party still has a heavy cloud having over it. It seems tonally different from the rest of the album. What is likely an expression of Cold War anxiety is poignant today, given the world’s current situation. We don’t need a Cold War to mull over our impending doom.

I also feel like Destroyer’s Rubies is just the byproduct of that band listening to “Five Years” nonstop for about six months and then recording an album. Certainly not the same lyrically, but definitely a lot of sonic similarities.

Bowie also has a versatile voice. The nasal “Soul Love” is different from the proto-punk bravado of “Suffragette City” and “Star”, which is different from the anxiety in Bowie’s voice in “Five Years.”

I like every song on this album. I usually don’t like all songs on an album, and that’s true even for albums I know I like. From this point on, I haven’t listened to any Bowie album all the way through until the last one, Blackstar. I’m curious to see where he went from here.