10 Biggest Geniuses In Rock And Roll

At the end of the '60s, rock could really go anywhere it wanted to. After the hippie movement abruptly ended and things started to turn a corner, most bands were either going for a harder edged sound or returning to the safer sounds coming from the folk and country traditions. As opposed to just being in one genre, David Bowie managed to work musical magic by doing everything he could at once.

Emerging as a glam rock superstar off the strength of albums like Ziggy Stardust, Bowie's distinct way of writing songs helped him touch on a wide variety of material across his tenure. After getting bored with the glammified alien look, Bowie spent the rest of his career in different periods of music, from his work with Robert Fripp and Brian Eno making more outlandish rock on Station to Station to eventually scoring a second wind with the help of Nile Rogers on the album Let's Dance.

Instead of just coaxing on his laurels though, Bowie's genius came from the way he asserted his art before anything else. No matter what period you caught him in, Bowie was always trying to push himself as a musician, going so far as to use industrial music on Earthling and even working until his final moments on Blackstar. For as much as he could have gotten by making glam rock tracks for the rest of his life, Bowie was always looking at the bigger picture and seeing just how much could be done in this little thing we call rock and roll.