The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

This is, perhaps, my second favourite Bowie album- you'll have to wait for the first. Obviously, it's quite simply an extraordinary collection of rocking, music hall, vaguely queer, anthemic, awesome songs, many of which still receive heavy radio play even now. There's a peculiar depth not only to the songwriting but even to the concept of the album itself and, indeed, the Ziggy Stardust altar ego, perhaps Bowie's finest.

And yet there's something ineffably 1972 about it. "Five Years" communicates a sense of oncming armageddon, something which includes but it at the same time wider than the Cold War fear of nuclear annihlation, and is almost existential in its cynicism. "Moonage Daydream" manages at the same time to communicate a jaded and very post-hippie, coming down from the highs sort of attitude to progress, apporiately marking the year which marked the last time, as of September 2020, that a human foot last touched the Lunar surface.

I'm not going to go rough each song as I'd be here all night, but the fact I need to say that is pretty revealing. This is an extraordinarily album- simultaneously shallow and deep, niche and popular, undisputably an album of the very first rank.