Wednesday, January 13th 2016. In recent days we celebrated the 69th birthday of one of the most impressive artists of the last five decades, David Bowie. According to a statement on his Facebook and Twitter pages of him, after having battled cancer for 18 months; the artist passed away on January 10th of 2016. The news went viral on social media the morning of January 11th.
Bowie represented musical culture of our time. His character Ziggy Stardust, constituted the epitome of influence for other artists in later times.
Since 1970, Bowie explained that Stardust was an alien that brought happiness to this world on his song “Starman”. This well studied character has an influence on fashion and modern artists style even to this day, for instance, the British magazine NME expressed that: “Bowie is the man who invented slander in Brett Anderson, theatricality in Björk, Morrisey’s staging, and made Ian Curtis want to be in a band.”
Bowie represented not only the music world, since everything we know as irreverent and different had already been invented by him. Marilyn Manson commented that he would be nothing without Bowie’s strong presence, even famous pop stars like Madonna, Rihanna and Lady Gaga are strongly influenced by him, and it’s all thanks to Ziggy Stardust.
Bowie’s music relies on the artist’s vocal strength and musical arrangements to go with his powerful lyrics, that decade after decade showed a rather different tinge in his messages; thus the questions little by little became life celebrations and enlightening ideas. This diversity was, and continues to be, a huge hit.
His musical pieces are part of the legacy left behind for us. Many artists have rendered tribute to him, for instance, the most famous version of one of his songs by him is the Unplugged session by the band “Nirvana” in which Kurt Cobain, with his raspy voice, makes the track “The Man who sold the World”. Up next, the track on the band’s YouTube Channel:
“Space Oddity”, the track which branded Bowie as an original novelty; while the words “Ground control to Major Tom” are now the most popular of his career. The track goes from great to grand, leaving us wanting to know more about the icon. This one has been selected by his stern fan base to say goodbye to the artist. From his YouTube channel about him, his most famous track about him:
An artist that innovates with their different proposals and identifies with the masses, is attractive to the end of times. Bowie will always be the Starman we loved so dearly, who has not passed to a floating form. Our goodbye to him leads us to this famous phrase by him: “I don’t know where I’m going, but I promise it won’t be boring”. Eternally, David Bowie!