10 Most Shocking Moments In Rock Music History

There's no real right way to deal with your own mortality. While many bands have tried to foreshadow their own demise in song form more than once, there's no real way to deal with it when you have to go over to the other side. If you're someone like David Bowie though, you turn it into one of the single greatest artistic moves of your career.

During the mid 2010's, Bowie had learned that he was battling liver cancer, which would eventually take his life on his birthday in 2016. Instead of just retiring from music and bowing out gracefully, the Starman managed to give us one last miracle with Blackstar. Released just a few days before his passing, the album seems to act as a reflection of the rock god that we've come to know over the last decades.

Going into the jazz realm, Bowie makes what amounts to a goodbye letter to everyone in his life, being both afraid of what the abyss might hold while at the same time having the bravery to face it head on. Though not shocking in the traditional sense, it says a lot about Bowie's artistic integrity that he was still wanting to leave his mark up until the very end. When it comes time for any of us to meet our maker, let's hope we face it with half the bravery as Ziggy did.