2009 David Bowie

The cliché about David Bowie says he's a musical chameleon, adapting himself according to fashion and trends. While such a criticism is too glib, there's no denying that Bowie demonstrated remarkable skill for perceiving musical trends at his peak in the '70s. After spending several years in the late '60s as a mod and as an all-around music-hall entertainer, Bowie reinvented himself as a hippie singer/songwriter.

David Bowie was born in the late 1940's in the United Kingdom with the name David Robert Jones. He picked up the saxophone at age 13, and by age 19 he was playing in a few different bands and had changed his name to David Bowie, the name we all know. By the late 1960's, his name was hitting the UK's music scene, and his first hit was Space Oddity in 1969.

Bowie started off the 1970's with The Man Who Sold The World, his first album that featured his work exclusively. After signing with the RCA label, Bowie released the LP The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars, which was an instant classic. During the 70's, Bowie not only write songs for himself, he also helped produce records for people such as Lou Reed (Transformer) and Iggy Pop (The Idiot).

In the 1980's, Bowie did not stick with just music. He started acting and appeared in The Hunger and the Ziggy Stardust movie. The new band that Bowie formed, Tin Machine, with Reeves Gabrels and the Sales Brothers, was not overly successful and Bowie went back to his own work soon afterwards. In 1983, Bowie changed labels to EMI and released the Let's Dance album.

The beginning of the 1990's was a trying time for Bowie, with the passing away of his guitarist Mick Ronson soon after completing a collaboration with Ronson on the Cream cover "I Feel Free." In 1996, Bowie went on tour with Nine Inch Nails to promote his Earthling album. Bowie released his single "Telling Lies" exclusively on the internet in 1997, the first major artist to release a track solely online. He finished off the 90's by releasing the album hours..., which was produced in Bermuda, and included hit tracks like "Thursday's Child" and "The Dreamers."

Since the millennium, Bowie has not slowed down. Two new albums as well as a slew of re-releases have sated the public's appetite for Bowie. "Slow Burn" and "Everyone Says 'Hi'," from Heathen were released as singles around the world to critical acclaim. In 2003, Bowie released Reality and once again stunned listeners with his vocals and melodies. Working once again with producer Tony Visconti, Bowie again returns to a sound from the past, yet tweaks it enough to make it seem modern, not retro. With Heathen, it was as though he concentrated on his early-'70s sound, creating an amalgam of Hunky Dory through Heroes. With Reality, he picks up where he left off, choosing to revise the sound of Heroes through Scary Monsters, with the latter functioning as a sonic blueprint for the album. He released the single for " New Killer Star " as a DVD-single, including the song and the music video. Italy was the only country to receive a CD single rather than the DVD.