The Life of a Legend: David Bowie’s Most Viral Albums
Known for being one of the most iconic pop figures of the ’70s, David Bowie’s charisma taught us that being different is cool and his performance in “Labyrinth” made me want to become the next Goblin Queen.
While Ziggy Stardust has found his way to the clouds, his legacy lives on through his nearly 30 albums recorded during his career. We used our analytics at WhereOnThe.Net to see which of Bowie’s albums have the most appearances online to date.
It is important to note that all numbers are current as of January 11, 2016, as we are sure there will soon be a spike as the world mourns this loss and reflects on Bowie’s accomplishments.
‘The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars’ (1972)
Often called Ziggy Stardust for short, this was Bowie’s fifth studio album and loosely tells the story of rock star Ziggy Stardust who acts as a messenger for extraterrestrial beings. The album topped charts in the U.K. and inspired a documentary under the same name that was released in 1973.
Since February 2008, the album has over 6,600 occurrences on 1,085 websites with a substantial spike in April 2015. Along with standard hits from Amazon, it has also received more bizarre coverage, including Rolling Stone Brazil’s report on how Bowie rejected an offer to collaborate with Coldplay and Mirror’s theory of this album foreseeing Kanye West’s birth.
‘Heroes’ (1977)
Referred to as “thrillingly iconoclastic” on iTunes, Heroes is the second installment of Bowie’s Berlin trilogy and his 12th studio album. The album appeared on charts world-wide, including The Netherlands, Japan, Australia and the U.S. It also gave us the track “Heroes,” which has developed into one of Bowie’s most well-recognized and covered songs.
The Heroes cover has generated nearly 6,700 hits since February 2008. It has also appeared on over 1,250 different websites, mostly European sites covering his time in Berlin such as Slate France but also more quirky features like this one about indie wedding songs in NME.
‘Aladdin Sane’ (1973)
Released as a follow-up to his breakthrough, The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars, this is Bowie’s the sixth studio album. While this album lived up to the hype, appearing on Rolling Stone’s list of the “500 Greatest Albums of All Time,” it gained much of its Internet fame after the cover image was made into a t-shirt and even a meme. Special shout out to photographer Brian Duffy and make-up artist Pierre Laroche for crafting that iconic lighting bolt we all know and love.
Aladdin Sane is Bowie’s most viral album to date. Since February 2008, the album has been featured on roughly 1,700 websites and over 9,300 individual pages.
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