DAVID BOWIE, A TIMELESS ICON

Friday, January 8th 2016. David Bowie is 69 years old today, managing to remain in the scene as a timeless icon. His life is rich in events, but his shows present certain defining details. The artist was born David Robert Jones, on January 8th of 1947 in London. Worldwide known as David Bowie, in honor of Jim Bowie, the famous maker of north American knives.

A lot of Bowie’s fame comes from his image, since the first thing we recognize are his differently colored eyes, product of a fight in his youth that almost cost him his left eye. Then, what many would catalog as heterochromia, is actually an abnormal dilation of his pupils, creating a double color effect.

Bowie’s iconic value has to do with his ability for complete reinvention. Each one of his musical stages is absorbed along with a spontaneous character; which is why at the beginning of his career, he was a red-haired man with existentialist questions, owing most of his success and the audience’s curiosity to his 1969 track “Space Oddity”

Surely, his most recognized character is Ziggy Stardust; the androgynous psychedelic man with a large red Z on the right side of his face that sang “Starman”, his 1972 track which would earn him his fans absolute fascination. This ideology ended shortly after the death of Ziggy Stardust, in a last concert where he said goodbye to the character that elevated him to star status.

These five years as an irreverent, free and controversial artist left us a group of wonderful tracks such as “The Man Who Sold the World”, which is the name of his third album. The 1971 track “Life on Mars” brought about a minimalistic video, where his trademark red mane with irregular cut, a light blue suit and focus on his blue eyes under the shade of an electric shadow of the same color hypnotized the viewer. From YouTube, the famous track:

During 1980, his rebel artist phase was fading out. The new age captured the masses, his tracks “Modern Love” and “Let’s Dance” were the essentials of young celebrations; not to mention the advertisement he received for various movie and TV appearances. Basically, there is no one in this decade that didn’t know about the singer.

In actuality, Bowie has stayed strong as an artist; in fact, on January 8th of 2013, he released his latest album “The Next Day”, whose namesake track elevated him once again to the consecrated music charts. He managed to be nominated to the “Mercury Prize”, awarded to the most important composers of the United Kingdom.

Bowie keeps causing the desired effect even now, from controversy to joy of dancing. The singer is the embodiment of humanity’s changes and through his music he leaves us a beautiful, encouraging message: “We can be heroes for one more day”.