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David Bowie (Music)

 David Bowie (Music)
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 David Bowie (Music)
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 Influences: Little Richard, Bob Dylan, Pink Floyd, Scott Walker, Syd Barrett, The Beatles, John Lennon, The Kinks, Velvet Underground, Anthony Newley, Brian Eno, Chuck Berry, Harmonia, The Pretty Things, The Spinners, The Who, Jacques Brel, Kraftwerk, Neu!, Kurt Weill, Philip Glass, Love, Marc Bolan, The Rolling Stones, The Stooges, Vince Taylor, Al Green, Billy Fury, Talking Heads, Devo, Donna Summer, Frank Zappa, The Pixies, Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead, Death Grips, Kendrick Lamar...Influenced: ABC, Adam Ant, A Ha, Alphaville, The Associates, Bauhaus, Berlin, Björk, Bloc Party, Blondie, Blur, The Breeders, Kate Bush, Wang Chung, The Church, Julian Cope, Elvis Costello, The Cure, Dead or Alive, Depeche Mode, Thomas Dolby, Duran Duran, Erasure, Eurythmics, Falco, Felt, Franz Ferdinand, A Flock of Seagulls, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Gary Glitter, Calvin Harris, The Human League, Iggy Pop, INXS, Interpol, Joe Jackson, Jane's Addiction, Japan, Jobriath, Grace Jones, Howard Jones, Joy Division, King Crimson, Kiss, Kendrick Lamar, Lady Gaga, La Roux, Love and Rockets, Madonna, Magazine, MÃ¥neskin, Manic Street Preachers, Marilyn Manson, Moby, Modern English, Morrissey, Mott the Hoople, Muse, My Chemical Romance, Naked Eyes, New Order, New York Dolls, Nine Inch Nails, Nirvana, Klaus Nomi, Gary Numan, Oingo Boingo, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Pet Shop Boys, The Pixies, Placebo, The Psychedelic Furs, Pulp, Queen, Radiohead, Red Vox, Roxy Music, The Runaways, Scissor Sisters, Simple Minds, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Smashing Pumpkins, Patti Smith, The Smiths, Soft Cell, Sponge, Harry Styles, Suede, Super Furry Animals, Supergrass, Talk Talk, Talking Heads, Tears for Fears, Television, The The, Thompson Twins, TV on the Radio, Ultravox, Vampire Weekend, The Verve, Wham!, Yello,...David Robert Jones (8 January 1947 – 10 January 2016), better known as David Bowie, was one of rock music's most influential figures. He went by many names, many sounds, and many visual styles throughout his career.Although his recording career began in 1964 — he released numerous R&B and Merseybeat-influenced singles (all of which are collected on the 1991 compilation Early On) and an album (the self-titled David Bowie, featuring a series of whimsical music hall-inspired ditties) during the middle years of The '60s — David Bowie first caught the eye and ear of the public in the autumn of 1969, when his space-age mini-melodrama "Space Oddity" (from his second album, also titled David Bowie and now better known as Space Oddity) reached the top five of the UK singles chart. After three years of musical experimentation and jumping between record labels, he re-emerged in 1972 during the glam rock era as the flamboyant, androgynous alter ego Ziggy Stardust, spearheaded by the hit single "Starman" and the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. The relatively short-lived Ziggy persona (about 18 months) epitomised a career often marked by musical innovation, reinvention, and striking visual presentation. He also produced Lou Reed's album Transformer around the same time, and The Stooges' Raw Power.In 1975, Bowie decided to toss everything he had built up out the window and record Young Americans, which the singer identified as "plastic soul". Bowie proceeded to achieve his first major American crossover success with both the album and the number-one single "Fame"; it was during this period that he became one of the few white performers invited to play Soul Train. The sound of Young Americans constituted a radical shift in style that initially alienated many of his UK devotees, but attracted swaths of American newcomers to his fanbase. After this, he had his first major film role with The Man Who Fell to Earth.Not entirely sure what to do next, Bowie spent about a year continuing his funk-influenced act (while, at the same time, starting to show some influences from German bands like Kraftwerk and Neu!) with his last "character", The Thin White Duke (showcased on his critically and commercially successful album Station to Station), a bizarre, thin, well-dressed, thoroughly sociopathic European aristocrat who — much as Bowie himself did at this point — survived primarily on "red peppers, cocaine, and milk."After a series of nasty PR incidents stemming from becoming Lost in Character as the Duke, Bowie realized that his cocaine addiction was taking a horrific toll on his mental health and retreated to Berlin to rehabilitate. There, he confounded the expectations of both his record label and his audiences worldwide by recording the experimental, minimalist album Low in 1977— the first of three collaborations with Brian Eno and Tony Visconti over the next two years (the other two being "Heroes" later in '77 and Lodger in 1979). Arguably his most experimental works (until his last album, anyway), the so-called "Berlin Trilogy" albums (named for his place of residence during this period as he pulled himself out of addiction, although significant portions of Low and Lodger were actually recorded elsewhere) all reached the UK Top Five, though their overall critical and commercial success was uneven ("Heroes" was well-regarded by critics at the time; the other two weren't). They have since become Vindicated by History and are regarded as some of his best works. Around the same time, he also produced Iggy Pop's solo albums The Idiot and Lust for Life, both from 1977, all of which have been canonised as classics.After the Berlin Trilogy, Bowie had UK number ones with the 1980 single "Ashes to Ashes" and its parent album, Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps), and paired with Queen for the 1981 UK chart-topper "Under Pressure". In 1982, Bowie jumped record labels again after over a decade of putting up with a financially unsatisfactory contract, and, seeking to make back the money his old label never allowed him to keep, consolidated his most commercial sound— and his most profitable one— in 1983 with the album Let's Dance, which yielded the hit singles "Let's Dance", "China Girl" (a cover of an Iggy Pop song from The Idiot which he co-wrote), and "Modern Love".1983 was also marked by The Hunger and Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, further establishing his side career as an actor. His best-known role after The Man Who Fell to Earth would be Jareth, the Goblin King in 1986's Labyrinth (which has gotten quite the reputation for gratuitous crotch shots in the process of becoming a Cult Classic). Ranging from supporting roles to cameos, his acting work covers everything from The Last Temptation of Christ to a voiceover role in SpongeBob SquarePants.The '80s were also significant for Bowie in that they marked an unusual milestone for him: after the 1983 Japanese CD release of Let's Dance and the 1984 CD release of Tonight, Bowie's previous record label took it upon themselves to re-release the remainder of Bowie's catalog on the format as well. in 1985, Bowie's first 14 studio albums were all released on CD, with the remaining songs in his backlog included on several greatest hits albums; as a result, Bowie became the first artist to have his entire catalog made available on Compact Disc.Bowie stayed with the commercial sound of Let's Dance for two more albums: 1984's Tonight and 1987's Never Let Me Down. Although both were successful commercially, they were unpopular critically speaking. Eventually, in 1988, a dissatisfied Bowie moved on to front the (ahem) short-lived rock band Tin Machine, which was warmly received at first but was shunned more and more up until their split in 1992; they've since been Vindicated by History thanks to their noticeable influence on grunge and 90s Alternative Rock in general. Since then the following albums were released to increasing critical acclaim as the Turn of the Millennium arrived.In The '90s, Bowie returned to solo work with 1993's Black Tie White Noise, an electronic/jazz/house hybrid album which yielded another Top 10 single in "Jump They Say". At the end of the year he would go to provide the music for the BBC mini-series The Buddha of Suburbia, which was also released as an album. 1994-5 saw Bowie reunite with Eno to produce 1. Outside, a much Darker and Edgier Industrial Rock Opera which explored the concept of murder as an art form. While 1. Outside was slated to have two sequel albums, Bowie scrapped the idea and instead issued Earthling in 1997, which explored Drum N Bass. The song "I'm Afraid of Americans" was notable for being remixed by Nine Inch Nails and issued as a single. NIИ lead and (at the time) sole member Trent Reznor also featured in the video as a stalker tracking down a paranoid Bowie.After successfully embracing a variety of different genres. 1999's 'hours...' saw Bowie settle into his "neo-classicist" phase. A year later, Bowie recorded Toy, an album containing re-recordings of several of his 1960s singles alongside a couple of new songs. However, issues with his record company led to the project being shelved, with the two new songs finding their way onto 2002's Heathen in a re-recorded form instead. Heathen also reunited Bowie with Tony Visconti, with the team going on to produce the rest of his albums. Reality was released in 2003, which saw Bowie embark on a major worldwide tour. However, a prolonged heart attack and subsequent angioplasty in 2004 forced him to cut the tour short, resulting in him making fewer and fewer public and media appearances.By The New '10s, Bowie was an apparently-retired Reclusive Artist...until January 8, 2013 (his 66th birthday), when he announced a new album, The Next Day, and presented its first song and video online. He no longer performed live or granted interviews by that stage. While he would not appear onstage, his next major project Lazarus (a musical stage play co-written with Enda Walsh, Inspired by… the source novel for The Man Who Fell to Earth) was set to debut off-Broadway in late 2015. It was followed by what would turn out to be his final studio album, ★note  pronounced Blackstar , released on his 69th birthday in January 2016. Two days after its release, Bowie passed away after an eighteen-month battle with liver cancer that he had been keeping secret. Two weeks later, NASA immediately discovered a planet in some other galaxy. You do the math.As soon as the world learned of Bowie's death, crowds and TV crews from throughout the world gathered at the "Aladdin Sane" mural opposite Brixton Station in south London, which immediately became a shrine and remains so to this day.Bowie and his work have been referenced, parodied, and otherwise in a colourful variety of works. The 1998 film Velvet Goldmine presents a No Celebrities Were Harmed take on Bowie's glam rock years. He's portrayed as a shape-shifting anti-villain in The Venture Brothers, the Doctor Who story "The Waters of Mars" has a Bowie Base One on the Red Planet, the villains of one My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic episode are known as Diamond Dogs, the Ready Jet Go! episode "Potatoes on Mars" had a "Life on Mars?" parody, etc. Two of his songs informed and became the titles of, a very successful BBC series and its follow-up in the new millennium (namely, Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes (2008)). At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, the closing stretch of the opening ceremony's Parade of Nations had Great Britain's team marching to "'Heroes'", which became the team's unofficial theme song. Bowie was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. And he's a popular subject for Real-Person Fic, while his various characters turn up in fics of their own.Notable for keeping his political opinions to himself and concentrating on entertainment.note Well, except during his drug-induced Creator Breakdown in The '70s, when he dabbled in fascism as the Thin White Duke — as Rick James once said, "Cocaine is a hell of a drug." It is unlikely that Bowie ever held sincere fascist beliefs; he was actually working with a racially integrated band and was inspired by the works of American singer and civil rights activist Nina Simone to record a cover of the song "Wild Is the Wind" during the time he was portraying the Duke, and he later criticised MTV for not playing videos by Black artists during the early 1980s. (Also, you know, he would later be happily married to a Muslim Black woman and the proud father of a mixed-race child. If there's one thing that terrifies and repulses actual fascists/racists, it's mixed marriages and the resultant "half breed" children.) Bowie was also openly political in a few of his later songs (and he expressed anti-fascist or anti-racist views in them), though the songs that are overtly political tend to be overshadowed by his other works. He married Somalian supermodel-actress Iman in 1992, and the couple had a daughter, Alexandria Zahra Jones, in 2000. Via his first marriage to Angela Barnett in The '70s, he is also the father of Zowie Bowie, better known these days as Duncan Jones, who made a name for himself as the director of the 2009 sci-fi Cult Classic Moon and the 2011 techno-thriller Source Code.The Onion's A.V. Club has an excellent Primer article that runs down his musical career, and Radio Soulwax's short film Dave is an excellent introduction to Bowie as well, with the audio consisting solely of numerous songs by Bowie and the visuals recreating his album covers and music videos. There's also Pushing Ahead of the Dame, a well-regarded blog by music journalist Chris O'Leary, which features long historical and critical essays on every song Bowie ever recordednote O'Leary has also published two books that expand upon his blog's contents: Rebel Rebel and Ashes to Ashes.Parts of David Bowie's package, known only as "The Area", have its own cult known as "Areaology" devoted to it.He ended at #29 in One Hundred Greatest Britons.The great man now has his own long-awaited Best Album Crowner, where you vote for your favourite Bowie album!
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