David Bowie is regarded as one of the most influential performers of his generation, having pioneered and presented the very best of British musical innovation and striking visual presentation. He is renowned for his distinctive voice, intellectual depth, and for creating an all-encompassing cult around himself.

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He was born on January 8. 1947 in Brixton, south London. He studied art, music, and design before he stepped into his journey of becoming a cultural icon. Recently, his extensive music catalog was sold to Warner Chappell Music.

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Today, on his 75th birth anniversary, we look back at some of his best songs:

5. Starman

When you think about it, the tale of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, like many other great concept albums from the 1970s, makes little sense. It’s partly because Bowie didn’t compose the songs with a wider tale in mind when he first wrote them. It doesn’t matter because the album is a masterpiece and the songs are all interconnected. 

Simply told, the tale revolves around an alien that visits Earth and adopts a human form in order to give humanity hope during its final five years. In 1973, Bowie told Rolling Stone, “Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a Starman. So he writes ‘Starman,’ which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately.” The song, which owes a musical debt to the Supremes’ “Over the Rainbow” and “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” became the album’s first smash and was essential in introducing Ziggy Stardust to a wider audience.

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4. Rebel Rebel

Bowie recognised it was time to move on just two years after bringing glam rock to the world. Thankfully, he recorded one more glam classic that encapsulated the entire trend. The iconic opening guitar riff seems like a lost Keith Richards riff, but it’s actually David Bowie playing it. “Rebel Rebel,” like “All the Young Dudes,” is about glam-rock lovers, but this time it’s about girls. He sings, “You love bands when they’re playing hard.” “You want more and you want it fast.” The song was a great smash, and he could have easily repeated the formula for years, but part of Bowie’s talent is his readiness to let go of his past and go on to something new.

3. Ziggy Stardust

Let’s go over what we learned about Ziggy Stardust in this song. He’s a left-handed person. He jams with Weird and Gilly, among others. He’s pallid and has “screwed-up eyes,” just like Bowie. Some believe the song is about Jimi Hendrix, but Bowie claims he was thinking more about Vince Taylor, a British rockabilly singer who is largely unknown in the United States. He was obviously drawing certain things from his own experiences as well. The song wasn’t even a single when it was released, but it quickly became one of Bowie’s most popular, and it closed out every show on his world tour in 2003-04.

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2. Space Oddity

“Life on Mars” is a simple story about a lonely girl with “mousy hair” and cruel parents who escapes her worries by going to the movies. However, the story is nearly utterly unimportant. The song boasts some of Bowie’s greatest vocals, backed by the Spiders From Mars, a string section, and pianist Rick Wakeman. It’s almost like a mini opera crammed into a four-minute song, with a rousing climax. Over the years, Bowie has performed it numerous times, and in 2005, he returned to the public eye by performing it at Fashion Rocks. He looked to have a black eye and a cast on his arm just a year after his heart attack.

1. Heroes

On his so-called “Berlin Trilogy” of albums from the late 1970s, David Bowie didn’t produce many apparent commercial tunes. “Heroes” appears to be the lone exception, however the song failed to chart in the United States in 1977, failing to even break the Top 100. The song was co-written by Brian Eno and started out as an instrumental, with Bowie adding lyrics about two lovers on opposing sides of the Berlin Wall only at the end of the sessions. The song’s popularity expanded over time, and by the 1990s, many fans regarded it as one of Bowie’s best songs. Bowie has always believed in the song and has performed it many times during his career.