David Bowie was born on January 8, 1947. Bowie was a singer, songwriter, and actor whose gift for re-inventing his image made him an influential pop star for almost fifty years.
He was born David Jones, but when his recording career began in the mid-1960s, it was easy to confuse that name with Davy Jones of The Monkees. Bowie took his new stage name from the 19th-century American pioneer Jim Bowie (the same man for whom the Bowie knife is named).
Bowie had early success in England in the late 1960s with singles "The Laughing Gnome" and "Space Oddity." His international breakthrough would come in 1972 with the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Ziggy Stardust was the first of several alter egos Bowie adopted during his career. The album explores themes of sexual exploration through Ziggy, an androgynous, bisexual glam rocker who believes he is in contact with extraterrestrials.
By the mid-70s, Bowie had retired Ziggy Stardust and adopted a persona known as "The Thin White Duke." On record, this persona is primarily associated with the 1976 album Station to Station. The Thin White Duke was a dramatic change from the visual flamboyance of Ziggy, dressed in a simple white shirt with black pants and vest. He was a controversial figure who made several comments that seemed to be supporting fascism. The boundaries separating Bowie from his stage personas were often blurry, and Bowie would later claim that his pro-fascist statements were entirely theatrical, in the voice of the fictional Thin White Duke.
Bowie moved to Berlin in the 1970s, where he worked with producer Brian Eno on three albums that came to be known as the "Berlin trilogy." Low and Heroes were albums of minimalist ambient music, with relatively few lyrics; the third album, Lodger, returned to a more traditional rock sound with elements borrowed from world music. (Twenty years later, Philip Glass adapted musical themes from Low and Heroes into his first and fourth symphonies.)
The 1980s were Bowie's most commercially successful period. He had made occasional breakthrough to the US pop charts – "Fame" and "Golden Years" had reached the top ten in 1975 – but 1983's Let's Dance made him more popular with a mainstream audience than he'd ever been. "China Girl," "Modern Love," and the title song were all big hits in both the US and the UK. Bowie also recorded a variety of duets with other artists in the 1980s. "Under Pressure" with Queen and "Dancing in the Streets" with Mick Jagger were the biggest hits, and "Little Drummer Boy/Peace on Earth" with Bing Crosby has become a holiday staple
In 1989 and 1991, Bowie recorded two albums as part of the band Tin Machine (the first is available for streaming). Fans weren't very interested in hearing Bowie as part of a larger group, and the albums were critical and commercial disappointments.
Bowie's albums of the 1990s continued to explore a wide range of styles. Black Tie White Noise was influenced by hip-hop, and Earthling by electronica. In 1999, Bowie released Hours as a digital album two weeks before the physical album went on sale, the first such release by a major artist.
After a 2004 heart attack, Bowie stopped recording for several years and performed only rarely. His 2013 album The Next Day was his first album in a decade. His final album, Blackstar, was released in January 2016, only two days before his death from liver cancer. He had not revealed his illness publicly, and his producer said that the album was meant as a "parting gift" for his fans.
David Bowie was a prolific recording artist who released 25 studio albums during his 50-year career. In addition to the albums linked above, most of his music is available for streaming, either at Hoopla or at Freegal.