David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust

Released in June 1972 on RCA and recorded at Trident Studios with his band the Spiders From Mars, this loose concept album introduced the alien rock star Ziggy Stardust and effectively launched glam rock as a mainstream cultural force. Bowie's July 1972 performance of Starman on Top of the Pops, in full Ziggy costume, is widely credited with changing British pop culture overnight. In 2017 the album was added to the US Library of Congress National Recording Registry for its cultural significance, and it's now regularly cited as one of the greatest albums ever made.

David Bowie was an English musician who spent five decades reinventing himself, moving through folk, glam rock, soul, art rock and electronic music, often years ahead of anyone else. Ziggy Stardust was his first great character and remains the one most people picture first, but it was just one act in a career built almost entirely around restless reinvention — a blueprint that shaped how several generations of musicians think about image, persona and artistic risk.