David Bowie

David Bowie treated pop identity as plastic material. From the eccentric folk of the late 1960s to the glam of Ziggy Stardust, from American soul music to the European coolness of Low and Heroes, each change also altered the public figure who carried the songs.

In the 1990s he went back to experimenting with electronics and noise; at the end of his life, The Next Day and Blackstar refused easy nostalgia. Toy, recorded in 2000 and released posthumously, added another fold in time to a catalog built on reinvention.

Why listen to David Bowie?

A career in which changing skin was never an escape, but a method of composition.