David Bowie - The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars ALBUM REVIEW

hi everyone welcome to this new review on the needle drop this is the brand new format that we're going to go with and the reviews here the reviews are posted on to my forehead and then you just basically sit here and read them off my forehead while I sit here in silence so that it will be easier for you to read my to me read a note here the Internet's busiest music nerd and it's time for a classic review of David Bowie's the rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and the spiders from Mars gotta say the full title guys the late and the great mr. David Bowie multi-instrumentalist producer singer songwriter his untimely death rocked the music industry earlier this year not only because we lost one of the most iconic figures in modern music but also the album that coincided with his death Blackstar the album was very much about it Bowie's death his spirit the afterlife his fame his memory in the public eye if you want to hear me talk about this album there is an album review of this LP on YouTube I will most likely link it at the end of this video as well but I thought I would take this classic sweet opportunity since we lost David Bowie in the first half of this year to talk about his most popular album yeah now this record is a part of several notable phases in David Bowie's career we have the early years which showcased a lot of baroque pop and a lot of folk influences later down the road in the late 70s and the early 80s we would hear a lot of pop rock art rock experimental rock but in the early in mid 70s Ziggy Stardust here is considered to be the pinnacle of David Bowie's glam rock era pairing with albums such as Aladdin Sane and the man who sold the world as well as hunky dory the album that directly preceded this one not a perfect album it does have a song kook's on it please don't kill me but an important record all the same because it did set the foundation for what was to come on this record you could catch these very theatrical and incredibly catchy rock songs with prominent lead guitars that are very sharp and melodic as well as some wonderful and rich pianos that are kind of playful and jumpy this album featured iconic David Bowie singles such as changes other tracks were direct references to artists who David Bowie drew an incredible amount of influence and inspiration from David Bowie an artist who always wore his influences on his sleeve we have a tribute to Bob Dylan on this album Andy Warhol as well and the song Queen [ __ ] is deeply inspired by Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground the baroque and folk influences on this record still come through on cuts like quicksand but there is one track on hunky dory that is incredibly important to take note of considering the themes of Ziggy Stardust and that is the song life on Mars it ends at a question mark you got to say it like a question and the theme that I'm talking about here is space at this point David Bowie had long been obsessed with space as a theme in his art I mean one of his big breakout singles Space Oddity can't can't forget that and life on Mars isn't so much about life on Mars instead it uses Mars as an escape or just an idea of an escape away from the mundane struggles and cliched commercial art of planet Earth it only makes sense that a song that would make such a statement would be wrapped and just lavish arranged instrumentation and be just instrumentally grand and showy kind of like a peacock anyway he explores these themes of rock and roll and space and fame through these really ambitious instrumentals and inventive characters and while Ziggy Stardust may not be as heavy and punchy and instrumentally crisp as the follow-up album Aladdin Sane which was drop just a year later it's really the themes concept of Ziggy Stardust that makes this album so CheY CheY CheY seminal record for bowie the record kicks off not only with some beautiful pianos and some very dramatic vocals from David Bowie but also with a storyline that sounds like it's ripped straight out of a sci-fi movie and that is that essentially the earth is dying and it has five years left to live the track has this gentle groove and three-four these beautiful piano and string crescendos a sort of get dissonant and chaotic at the end with David Bowie's vocals just shouting and going crazy and the lyrics have this rush of nostalgia like David Bowie's life is just kind of flashing before his eyes and he's thinking about all these things that he's gonna miss some of these things are very mundane everyday stuff whether it be boys and toys and TVs and electric irons all these things he feels like he needs to stash away in his mind his mind he compares it to a warehouse and it's all cluttered and he needs to jam everything in there because everything is literally about to be erased from the face of the earth and there are so many things going on lyrically in the track I mean there are references to everyday life as well as political jabs like when a cop sort of kisses the feet of a preacher and David Bowie says this causes a nearby queer to throw up the entire track is just a mural with numerous characters and things going on at once it's a beautiful open to the record and sort of gives the album a very do me and gloomy tone but it deviates from it really quickly once the song soul love pops in which is a very lovely love song very sensual and smooth but with Bowie's very odd and doubled singing voice on the track it almost sounds like he's an alien being beamed down from another planet to deliver a message of peace and love set to some saxophone and some springy hand percussion and some very tinny acoustic guitar and while it is a love song I think it avoids a lot of the cliches of the love songs of the day because Bowie sings about of in this very abstract and philosophical sense we get into the song managed a dream which is a little more eventful not only because I think it gets back into the concept the narrative of the record but it features these punchy guitars loud blaring great drum fills one of David Bowie's most iconic opening lyrics I'm a mama papa covered for you which might have been his way of censoring himself from saying the word [ __ ] not totally sure this track in a sense is also an introduction to the Ziggy Stardust character even though the track itself predates this album still though Bowie portrays himself as a space invader who is leaving quite the impression on Earth's population he seems almost like this object of infatuation or he wants to be anyway especially when the chorus comes around and he's saying keep your electric eye on me and I know if we take the narrative of this record and we look at it just on the surface Ziggy is supposed to be coming down and saving the world from this five-year oblivion that's going to be suffering but this track and the album itself is really more of a statement on Fame and attention and wanting attention and there are other interpretations that people can pull from this track but that attention that Fame narrative becomes more and more apparent as the album progresses now I don't want to leave this track before saying that I love the instrumental here the guitar solo passage is fantastic the psychedelic effects on the vocals are wonderful the strings get totally wild toward the end of the cut the horns and flute passage in the middle of the track is beautiful too in a way I see Bowie portraying himself on this track as an artist or a figure who if he had the platform if he had the opportunity he could leave a real impact on people leave a real impression on people and that feeling is kind of confirmed on the song Starman where Bowie literally sings about the star man being in the sky and he would like to come down but he feels like if he does and he exposes us to these new ideas and sounds and whatever he'll blow our minds in his own art David Bowie is telling us that he feels like he has something special to offer something that's going to leave a mark on musical and artistic history and maybe it's this mark it's this new set of ideas that he sort of given us that have actually ended up saving the world from this five-year peril that he's singing about earlier on the song it ain't easy we deviate from the narrative of the album again because the track is essentially a cover song of Iran Davies track which is a actually very soulful and wonderful country song that dropped in 1970 has a really plucky acoustic guitar intro as well David Bowie's renditions here is much heavier punchy er his very yell P vocal delivery on the cut I imagine could have left a strong impression on like a young Jack White but once we get into the song ladies start us we have David Bowie reflecting on image once again now in respect to glam rock and specifically Marc Bolan of t-rex who the song references he was notorious for his performance makeup and his long black hair and like sort of this star man that David Bowie was singing about earlier he is this artistic he is this rock-and-roll figure who close minded people are just baffled by so in a way David Bowie is kind of commenting on this new wave of expression in rock music and the way that the public is kind of interpreting it in it then you have to consider the themes on this album and in glam rock in general that dealt in homosexuality because glam rock was home to many superstars that were either gay or bisexual or use the characters they would play onstage to bend gender what I find so interesting about this record is just how popular it still is and I tribute that mostly to the music of the album which is wonderful it's beautiful it's awesomely produced glam rock music with great detailed lavish instrumentation but when we dive into the lyrics of the album they're very dated in a sense because it's very meta and it's very of the time that this album was released in the type of stuff that Marc Bolan and David Bowie were doing back in the day wouldn't turn any heads today but you have to think about just how close minded a lot of people would have had to have been back in the 70s not only to just be blatantly rejecting homosexuality but just the mere stage show that artists like Bolin and Bowie were putting together so yes this is one of many moments where David Bowie is just reflecting on the image of glam in the public's perception David Bowie dives directly into the idea of rock stardom on the song star which I guess in a way is still space themed since Star space haha but lyrically David Bowie portrays a rock star is something to transform into mutate into and it's not only something that he wants it's like he needs it as well because by the end of the track he's telling us that he'd be able to sleep at night if he was a rock and roll star he'd be able to fall in love if he was a rock-and-roll star the song hang on to yourself isn't one of the more lyrically intriguing moments although we do get a direct reference to the spiders from Mars on this track which is Ziggy Stardust backing band which he addresses directly on the very next track but this song is pretty awesome because it features these punky guitar riffs that feel like the something that would have come off of like a New York Dolls record just her tales or you arrest so wild Bowie was an artist who very blatantly borrowed from a lot of his contemporaries he was also an artist who in a lot of respects was ahead of the curve now Ziggy Stardust song isn't really this heroic entry in any sort of way in in this track Bowie explores fame even deeper and in a way the fame that Ziggy Stardust has received due to just being so great a guitar and being a great musician has kind of poisoned him because by the end of the cut he's sucked up into his own ego and the band ends up having to be broken up because as David Bowie sings in the song he's taking it too far which eventually leads us to his uh I guess in a sense his rock-and-roll suicide that ends the album off because even though David Bowie has portrayed stardom and fame as this wonderful beautiful thing for much of this record something that he very much wants and very much needs the star that has risen on the album now needs to fall because on this record this song is essentially the curtain closing on Ziggy and it is a very epic curtain close as it really feels like on this cut that just the spotlight is on the character that Bowie is playing you know Bowie one of those artists who one of the earliest examples I could think of who in his music when he singing it really feels like I'm listening to a stage show it feels like I'm listening to a singer just on a hot spotlight and he's delivering not only just great singing and great lyrics but also a performance on a theatrical level and sure there have been many artists who have played characters in their songs over the years and have told great stories in their songs over the years but I feel like Bowie more than any of those other artists who came before him embodied this sense of drama and theater in his music like to the extreme especially at the end of this track is he's just shouting give me your hands give me a hand and just before a big rush of instrumentation oh no you're not alone a really beautiful and dramatic finish to this beautiful and dramatic and very meta and self-referencing album an album that when you really get into the lyrics again David Bowie makes some interesting statements on the artistic and the musical politics of the time in relation to glam rock and in a way art and public image and sexuality to all these things I think continue to make ze start us an interesting and relevant and an influential record sure the music is fantastic I mean it's beautiful gorgeous rock music with again that extra instrumentation which is added into it so tastefully doesn't take away from the viscera and the excitement of the bass instrumentation of the bass guitar on the guitars and the drums and the vocals and then on top of that many of the statements on Fame which I think are very relevant on this record to this de themes that have not only been explored again and again and again by countless rock stars such as Marilyn Manson but also many rappers today are now going through a very similar meta cycle where a lot of rap albums from artists like Kanye West and Drake and Kendrick Lamar where they're essentially rapping about their own fame but also about how it's not really all it's cracked up to be but what's funny is that some of these statements are put so subtly or at least they're buried in hooks and choruses and instrumentation that are so beautiful unless you were really looking for David Bowie to be saying these things you might sort of miss it which is why I urge people who may even be you know familiar with this album instrumentally and really love the sound of this record - next time you're listening to it dive a little bit further into what David Bowie is saying and think about the time in history in which he is saying and I think I'm gonna leave this album review right there yes a lot of cool contextual things about this album that I feel like we addressed here cool narrative awesome lyrical concepts and above all wonderful music wonderful rock music wonderful instrumentation and I hope you give this record a shot if you haven't listened to it already your best da anthony Fantan Oh David Bowie Ziggy Stardust transition thanks for watching the review check out some of the other reviews over here rest in peace David Bowie you'd best anthony Fantana music forever

Channel: theneedledrop

Views: 447,426

Rating: 4.9485765 out of 5

Keywords: album, review, music, reviews, indie, underground, new, latest, lyrics, full song, listen, track, concert, live, performance, update, the needle drop, anthony fantano, vlog, talk, discussion, music nerd, david bowie, ziggy stardust, star, starman, aladdin sane, hunky dory, changes, space oddity, black star, spiders from mars, rise and fall

Id: 7pJ3EFwY1Pw

Length: 17min 14sec (1034 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 19 2016