By: Brooke Johnpier, Music Department Member
David Bowie, born David Robert Jones, was an English singer, songwriter, and actor. He’s regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, due to his work in the 70’s.
Bowie was born on January 8, 1947, in Brixton, England, a section of London. He attended Stockwell Infants School until he was six, earning a reputation for being gifted and single-minded, as well as a defiant brawler.
For two years he and his family moved around until they finally settled down in Sundridge Park. He went to junior school where his voice was appraised as “adequate” by the school choir and demonstrated above-average abilities in playing the recorder.
At the age of nine, he was enrolled in some music and movement classes, where his teachers called him “vividly artistic,” and said that his poise was amazing for a child. It was also during this time that his love of music would grow. He would hear music from Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Fats Domino.
Throughout his career, Bowie released 26 studio albums. For the sake of time and space, I will only be focusing on the albums from the first part of his career to the middle of his career.
Bowie’s self-titled debut was released on June 1, 1967. His next album was released under the same name, but is more commonly referred to as Space Oddity. This album was released on November 14, 1969. A year later, his third album, The Man Who Sold the World was released.
Bowie’s fourth studio album, his best album to-date – in my opinion – was Hunky Dory. This album jumped from his previous album’s style of hard rock to pop rock and was released on December 17, 1971.
Although The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars in 1972 propelled him to fame, Bowie would make nine albums before he released his arguably most famous album, Let’s Dance. Released 11 years after Stardust was released, Bowie would top the charts in most countries, and came in at number three on the Billboard 200 chart. This album contains the hit songs “Let’s Dance” and “China Girl,” the latter of which was written by Iggy Pop.
Bowie released 11 more albums after Let’s Dance, and one was released posthumously in 2021.
Sadly, Bowie passed away from liver cancer on January 10, 2016, in New York City.
Despite claims that Bowie was born with two different colored eyes, that wasn’t the case. He got into a fight with his friend over a girl, and his friend punched him in the left eye. This would result in a series of operations, and a four-month hospitalization. His doctors said his eye couldn’t be repaired and he was left with faulty depth perception and anisocoria, which is a permanently dilated pupil. This gave him the appearance of a different-colored iris.
Five of Bowie’s albums made it into Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Times. He was also ranked on their 2023 list of 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. He was ranked 32nd.
If you’ve never listened to Bowie, please do. He is such an amazing artist, and he was a huge inspiration to all artists that came after him. I promise you that you won’t regret listening to him.
Want to share your thoughts? Have a band/artist that you want to be featured? Email Brooke at johnpibl23@bonaventure.edu!
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