Constructed as a loose concept album about an androgynous alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust, Bowie's fractured, paranoid lyrics are evocative of a decadent, decaying future, and the music echoes an apocalyptic, nuclear dread. Fleshing out the off-kilter metallic mix with fatter guitars, genuine pop songs, string sections, keyboards, and a cinematic flourish, Ziggy Stardust is a glitzy array of riffs, hooks, melodrama, and style and the logical culmination of glam. And that self-conscious sense of theater is part of the reason why Ziggy Stardust sounds so foreign. Bowie succeeds not in spite of his pretensions but because of them, and Ziggy Stardust -- familiar in structure, but alien in performance -- is the first time his vision and execution met in such a grand, sweeping fashion.

Label: EMI Serial: 07243 521900 2 7 Title: David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars Year: 1972 (2003 SACD) Track listing:

01. Five Years
02. Soul Love
03. Moonage Daydream
04. Starman
05. It Aint't Easy
06. Lady Stardust
07. Star
08. Hang On To Yourself
09. Ziggy Stardust
10. Suffragette City
11. Rock'n' Roll Suicide

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