Fifty years ago today, David Bowie alongside his backing band the Spiders from Mars, released his fifth studio album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, commonly abbreviated to Ziggy Stardust.

Previous chart success has been achieved with singles such as ‘Space Oddity’, ‘The Man Who Sold The World’, and his proceeding LP Hunky Dory, but it was Bowie’s fifth studio album that would catapult him to superstardom capturing the attention and imaginations of millions worldwide.

Upon its release, the album peaked at number five on the UK Albums Chart and at number 75 on the US Billboard Music Charts. ‘Starman’ was released as the lead single on April 28, 1972, resulting in a career-defining moment for Bowie, with ‘Suffragette City’ as the B-side. Bowie was then invited to perform on the BBC television show Top of the Pops after 'Starman' climbed to number 41 on the UK Singles Chart.

In Rolling Stone’s 1972 review, they described the album as “David Bowie's most thematically ambitious, musically coherent album to date, the record in which he unties the major strengths of his previous work possessing a thorough command of the elements of rock & roll.”

Ziggy Stardust has been reissued multiple times and was remastered in 2012 for its 40th anniversary. Universally recognized as "culturally, historically, and artistically significant", in 2017 the Library of Congress selected the album for preservation in the National Recording Registry stating: “'Ziggy Stardust' can be considered an album of rock standards.”

In 1987, Rolling Stone ranked Ziggy Stardust Number six on their 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years, and again in 2020, placing it at number 40 on their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list.

BMG is honored to represent scores of David Bowie's songs from 1970 to 1977, including ‘Starman’, ‘Ziggy Stardust’ and ‘Moonage Daydream’. All of which and more feature in the upcoming definitive new Bowie movie, Moonage Daydream by Brett Morgan, co-produced and co-financed by BMG.