David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust (1972)

Hunky Dory was a great continuation and realization of what David Bowie had created up to that point. However, for as many times as we've said that Bowie's career takes off, I do honestly see what they mean with Ziggy Stardust.

Bowie was always able to capture the strangeness of others, of people, and particularly of rock stars. He lived as an artist, a musician, and Ziggy Stardust is no less the capturing of that persona. The ideas presented here are what we feel echoed in other masterpiece albums, such as Pink Floyd's The Wall.

I want to make clear, I have enjoyed David Bowie up to this point. However, Ziggy Stardust is the first album in this discography in which every song feels like it captures the tone correctly for the whole album. It has few outliers, it has a direction and composition that is nearly perfect, and I have not felt the same level of struggle and appreciation in the lyrics, the guitar, the piano, the band as I have from this album. This is a landmark, this is a canonized album, and this is deserving of the title of Masterpiece.