Last Sunday, Jan. 10, 2015, David Bowie passed away. I didn’t know it, but he had been battling cancer for 18 or so months. I don’t pay attention to these things, so I don’t know if he was keeping his condition a secret or I just didn’t know.

He was 69.

Like him or hate him, you really have to admit that he was a seminal figure in modern music – an androgynous chameleon who helped shape the showmanship style of music.

I was never a huge fan, but I liked his music. I only owned one LP – the compilation changesonebowie, pictured – but when a song was on the radio, I didn’t click away.

Below are my favorite Bowie songs (that I can recall off the top of my head), in no particular order for the most part.

• Space Oddity – My favorite Bowie song. Existential angst meets PR (“…and the papers want to know whose shirts you wear…”), it could almost be a parable for what the life of a celebrity is like. Breathtaking and unique at the time. One of my all-time favorite songs.
• Heroes – Again, larger than life.
• Changes – The stutter is what makes the song.
• Fame – Once again, Bowie comments on the celebrity life
• Ziggy Stardust – One of Bowie’s earliest transformations.

While I do beleive the Bowie was a talented musician and – especially – a solid songwriter, I think he really made his mark by being so far ahead of the curve.

Today, U2 performs in the round with lasers and, I dunno, jetpacks; Madonna/Miley Cyrus keep changing personas to suit their mood/music; ambiguous sexuality today gets a “whatever” shrug. And he was in an interracial marriage for over two decades (to the supermodel Iman), which in the early 1990s wasn’t commonplace.

Back when Bowie was getting started (the changesonebowie album contains music from 1969-1976), bands members were expected to come out on stage with a guitar/bass around their necks, walk up to the microphone and just sing/strum.

Not Bowie – it was not just a performance, it was a production. And you were never quite sure what he’d come out as. A guy with glitter all over his face???

And that – to me – is his legacy.

Overall, Bowie is overall too pop for my taste (Blue Jean, Let’s Dance), but even if he was just a one-hit wonder with Space Oddity, the world would still be richer.