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Ziggy Stardust: Song Review



The Album:

I should say that I am very surprised that this hasn't already just turned into a David Bowie fan page. David Bowie is one of my favorite artists and has always been one of the coolest people to ever do it in my mind. I have heard all of his music, have many of his albums on vinyl, listen to many of his songs on the daily, and have learned how to play a lot of his music. So, you could say that I am a pretty big fan! So then, the first question is why Ziggy Stardust?

The song was released on Bowie's album "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars". For those that don't know too much about David Bowie, he liked to create personalities that he could become on stage. The most famous and notable of these personalities is Aladdin Sane, the next being Ziggy Stardust. The albums containing these characters or personalities were based of the characters. The songs were crafted in such a way that they revolved around and told the story of the character. In my opinion, this is pretty damn cool. This is something that not too many other artists really did and this is what made David Bowie so different.

The Album is called "The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" and as you may guess, it details the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust. Ziggy Stardust is a character created by David Bowie... and also some spiders from mars. I should first clarify that there are no actual spiders from mars and that part instead refers to Ziggy's band. The album is about Bowie's alter ego Ziggy Stardust who is sent to Earth as a savior. He plays guitar with the "spiders from mars" until a sort of apocalyptic event happens. This album is a loose concept album as it all sort of ties together but doesn't quite flow like some other concept albums. A good example of a concept album, in fact the prime example, is "The Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. So that is a brief overview of the album, but I don't want to spoil too much. I will get more into this album later as I plan to do an album review soon for the album!



The Song - Ziggy Stardust:

Anyway, let's get back to the song. The song is what I would call the namesake song for the album since it is called Ziggy Stardust. I first want to talk about the lyrics and the content of the song because to me I think that it one of the coolest parts. The song is a story about Ziggy Stardust told from the perspective of one of his band members. It tells the story of how Ziggy became too famous. In the song, the band member says that Ziggy became the "special man". This means that Ziggy became the front man of the band and was the one that people loved while the other bandmates got little to none of the attention. 

As we move farther into the song, we can see that it was this fame and fortune combined with Ziggy's ego that really started to create problems. We can not tell which it is completely, but Ziggy becoming the main focus started to create dissent either in the band or among fans. In the first chorus, the band member wonders aloud if they should "break his sweet hands". If they did this, he would no longer be able to play guitar and he would no longer be the "special man". Finally, things go to far. In the final chorus of the song, the band member says "when the kids had killed a man, I had to break up the band". Now, we are not told who the man is why he was killed, but personally I like the ambiguous ending. I think that it adds to the mystery around Ziggy Stardust. We don't know if he was killed or if someone else was killed by the fans, either way, it is a pretty crazy way to end a song!

The story that plays out in this song is definitely one of the best that I have heard in a concept album. However, the great story telling and near perfect lyrics are not the only good thing about this song. The instrumental is also one of the best rock instrumentals that I think has ever been made. It isn't super hard and the lick isn't super complex. Instead, it is a basic chord combination played with a 12-string acoustic and a standard electric guitar. When the song start, the two guitars roar out with a certain kind of energy that I have only ever experienced when listening to this song. The verses go a little quieter to give the song a more spacy feeling and then it grows loud again in the choruses. The chorus is also a rather basic chord combination, but it just sound so awesome. Couple the great guitar, Bowie's voice, and the good production together and you get one of the best songs to have ever been released. 

This is true rock and roll and I absolutely love it. I can't wait till I can get this album on vinyl. It is currently one of the only albums that I am missing that I currently want. However, I will soon be doing an album review and so if you found this article interesting, it would really help me out if you could follow the blog! 

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