A new year asks for a new skin, or at least a new angle on the old one. It’s fitting, then, that the first Common Chords column of 2026 returns to the moment David Bowie perfected that very art. The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars isn’t just an album about transformation; it’s a blueprint for becoming someone else at the stroke of cultural midnight. As calendars turn and we strain to imagine who we might be next, Ziggy stands there like a glitter-sheathed guide, whispering that time may change me, but I can’t trace time, and that the only rule is the one you invent.
“I could make a transformation as a rock and roll star.”
Ziggy’s lineage is easy to sketch but impossible to replicate. Bowie took the Beatles’ melodic brilliance and studio invention, Lou Reed’s downtown cool, the Who’s mod bite, and a dose of T. Rex’s metallic shimmer, then ignited them with his own fascination for the theatrical. His world was post-war Britain dressed as a dream of outer space, a place where the strange kids in art schools could finally paint themselves into something bigger than their neighborhoods. What he found in these influences wasn’t comfort but possibility. Ziggy was equal parts messiah and misfit, a visitor from the stars who understood that alienation could be a superpower. Long before anyone said weird>cool, Bowie lived it.
The album’s loose sci-fi concept had one foot in pulp fantasy and the other in emotional truth. The alien outsider arriving to save (or doom) a collapsing world mirrored the inner weather of a generation wrestling with the fallout of the 60s. The opening track “Five Years” still hits like a newsflash from the end times, the drums thumping like a heart trying to outrun dread. Today, when headlines tilt between chaos and hope with alarming speed, the song feels almost clairvoyant. Bowie sings it like someone trying to steady the room, but also like someone stunned by the realization that the future has a shorter fuse than anyone admits.
“Starman” offers the counterweight, that gentle, shimmering lift that hints at salvation. Its chorus, one of the century’s catchiest, arrives like a message through static. Bowie knew exactly what he was doing: the melody nods to the Beatles without copying them. And woven into its glow is a truth that echoes through Bowie’s larger catalog, a reminder that even in the loneliest moments, there’s always ground control to Major Tom, someone or something reaching back when you send the signal. And now, with Bowie himself off among the constellations, it’s tempting to imagine he’s the one waiting in the sky, gently advising us not to blow it as we spiral through another strange century. It’s no wonder kids who saw Bowie debut on Top of the Pops spoke of it as a before-and-after moment.
Other tracks deepen the textures of the world Bowie was building. “Lady Stardust” is a tribute to glam’s fragile, glittering masks, equal parts homage and confession. “Ziggy Stardust” mythologizes the character while exposing the seams of performance, Mick Ronson’s guitar slicing the air like a manifesto. “Suffragette City” is pure pulse, a mod-punk sprint that hints at the rebellion simmering beneath Bowie’s lacquered veneer. And “Rock and Roll Suicide” closes the record like a benediction for the lonely. When Bowie cries out, “You’re not alone,” it lands not as theater but as truth.
Part of Ziggy’s legend comes from the way Bowie committed to the character long after the studio lights dimmed. For more than a year, he didn’t just play Ziggy, he inhabited him. Interviews, performances, personal appearances — all done as the red-haired alien messiah. It wasn’t cosplay, and it wasn’t a prank. It was Bowie testing the boundaries of identity, exploring what happens when the artist becomes the art. In a world decades away from mainstream conversations about gender fluidity and self-invention, he pushed those doors open early. Without Ziggy, there’s no Prince drifting through eras like a cosmic trickster, no Boy George shapeshifting through culture with fearless glam, no Queen embracing theatricality as destiny, no Gorillaz proving that imaginary identities can be as real as flesh, no My Chemical Romance turning operatic angst into arena-scale theater, no Talking Heads showing that nervous, angular art-rock could become stadium-sized communal catharsis. Bowie was the first to say rebel rebel to the limits placed on the self.
The album artwork remains crucial to its myth. Shot outside a dingy London storefront, the cover looks like a still from an alien noir, Ziggy standing under the glowing K.WEST sign (a coincidence that’s launched way more Kanye theories than this world strictly needed), a figure of impossible color against wet pavement and muted brick. Bowie’s art-school instincts shine: he knew sound alone wasn’t enough. A persona had to be seen as well as heard, the way diamond dogs had to roam the streets before anyone feared or adored them. Ziggy’s image became a talisman, a promise of escape for anyone who needed a new face to wear.
As for when to listen, Ziggy is best experienced in a place built for departures, not arrivals. Think Hartsfield-Jackson in the twilight hours, when the concourses hum with that soft electric restlessness and the PA announcements feel like coded signals from another world. Find yourself at a gate with twenty minutes until boarding, the sun slipping behind the tarmac, that bluish airport dusk settling over everything. That’s when the album’s 38 minutes of brilliance snap into focus.
Ziggy thrives in these thresholds — the moments when you’re suspended between where you’ve been and where you’re going, surrounded by strangers who might as well be fellow travelers from the Spiders from Mars terminal. It’s the same emotional vapor trail Radiohead would later follow — that uncanny mix of dread and possibility that hums through the spaces where your life hasn’t quite caught up to your imagination. Let “Five Years” roll as you watch the runway lights blink awake, let “Starman” lift as your flight edges closer, and somewhere around “Rock and Roll Suicide,” you’ll remember why Bowie built music for the exact second you choose the next version of yourself. Ziggy isn’t just any twilight record; it’s a boarding pass for a new trajectory.
Fifty-four years on, the album’s relevance hasn’t dimmed. Its fears feel familiar, its hopes feel urgent, and its compassion feels radical. Bowie wasn’t promising that we could be heroes forever, only that for one day — or one year, or one album — we might find the courage to step into the self we’ve been sketching in secret. Ziggy arrived to tell us that alienation isn’t a flaw but a compass, pointing toward the version of ourselves we haven’t yet dared to unveil.
Maybe that’s why it feels right to start 2026 with him. The calendar resets, the light shifts, and Ziggy Stardust reappears at the threshold, reminding us that the future belongs to those bold enough to shape their own outline — to take that first step toward the person they’ve been quietly assembling all along.
Megan’s favorite song on this album is “Moonage Daydream.” It’s no debate that Bowie is the blueprint, and this track is the masterclass on how to live, breathe and become the art. In “Moonage Daydream,” we meet our protagonist for the first time. He’s an “alligator,” a “space invader,” and a “rock & roll bitch for you.” With a groove as smooth as butter, Bowie croons his heart out in a melancholic manner that fuses hope and heartbreak. Bowie not only lights the torch for generations ahead, but shines it in the dark, empty space and pushes you to float into the unknown. Decades later, you can sense the soul of Bowie in the works of Lana Del Rey, whose lyricism intertwines Americana archetypes and love songs turned literary. Other artists have followed Bowie’s footsteps by devoting their whole lives to becoming the characters birthed within their albums, as Tyler the Creator accomplished for his album Igor.
Legend has it that Bowie would sometimes write lyrics by physically cutting out words on paper and arranging them in bizarre, random ways until he could make sense of them in a song. If this is true, “Moonage Daydream” sounds as though it may have been written with this technique, which is why it’s all the more beautiful and brave. Ending with one of the best guitar solos in Bowie’s catalogue, it’s safe to say Ziggy Stardust and his “Moonage Daydream” will be heard across the galaxies for many more decades to come.
Wendell’s favorite song on the album is “Hang on to Yourself” as it is Bowie at his most adrenalized, a glam detonation that steals T. Rex’s strut and bolts a jet engine to it. The groove is pure Marc Bolan swagger, but the velocity is Bowie’s own, riding a proto-punk bassline that practically sprints out of the speakers. It remains the fastest song he ever recorded, a reminder that Ziggy wasn’t just glitter and myth but also muscle and momentum. Ronson tears through the track like he’s filing patents for future guitar heroes; Mick Jones would later say songs like this flipped a permanent switch in his head, and listening back, you can hear exactly where the circuit changed. And then there are the lyrics — the funky-thighs, the tigers on Vaseline, the Spiders from Mars — which don’t so much clarify the story as smear glam desire across the frame. Bowie isn’t explaining anything; he’s transmitting the heat of a world where sex, fame, and alien mythology all blur together into one urgent command: hang on.
David Bowie’s work can be found here, and his music can be found on all streaming platforms and wherever records are sold. You are likely to find his songs played on SiriusXM stations The Spectrum and Deep Tracks.
A great album to review, thanks … and ‘Let all the children boogie’