Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 10/21/2003
Run Time: 54:40
Borrowing heavily from
Marc Bolan's
glam rock and the future shock of
A Clockwork Orange,
David Bowie reached back to the heavy
rock of
The Man Who Sold the World for
The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Constructed as a loose concept album about an androgynous alien
rock star named
Ziggy Stardust, the story falls apart quickly, yet
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.
Mick Ronson plays with a maverick flair that invigorates rockers like
"Suffragette City," "Moonage Daydream," and
"Hang Onto Yourself," while
"Lady Stardust," "Five Years," and
"Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" have a grand sense of staged drama previously unheard of in
rock & roll. 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.
~Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
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