10 Perfect Follow Ups To Masterpiece Albums

When David Bowie first burst onto the scene, no one was really thinking that they found their new brand of rock star. Space Oddity seemed more like a novelty than anything else, but once Bowie came into his own, we were introduced to Ziggy Stardust, the English born alien that was coming down to save Earth from a 5 year extinction. Ziggy may have died towards the end of the album with Rock and Roll Suicide, but the Starman already had a vision for what the Americanized version of Ziggy could do.

Having a much more nasty tone this time around, Aladdin Sane is more about dealing with territory that may have been a little too dirty for the original Ziggy to take on, creating songs that were about the excesses Bowie was seeing during his first American tours, like the ‘50s pastiche about adult films on Drive In Saturday or embracing his mantle as one of the leaders of glam rock on the Jean Genie.

Bowie was never content to stay in one place for too long though, and half of this album has him exploring even new sonic spaces, like the weird piano solo that comes on the title track or closing things out with Lady Grinning Soul, with the same scope that you would come to expect in the closing credits to a James Bond film. This might be a more brash form of Ziggy, but even David didn’t have time to dwell on it for too long. We had already gone on that trip, and we were halfway to the likes of Diamond Dogs at this point.