Why is David Bowie so highly regarded? I mean, I like him and his music but what makes him stand out...

>and was truly avant garde in the last 70s
Imagine thinking this. I'm a fan of Low but that shit was not avant-garde. Only by pop standards was it zany.

he had a solid discography
he effectively surfed from one trend to another as they were happening
had genuine star power in his personas and presentation
was always there when something cool was going down (supported acts, collaborated with others)
genuinely has a couple of era-defining transcendent hits

>David Bowie turned marketing into the essence of his art. All great phenomena of popular music, from Elvis Presley to the Beatles, had been, first and foremost, marketing phenomena (just like Coca Cola and Barbie before them); however, Bowie turned that into an art of its own. With Bowie the science of marketing becomes art; art and marketing become one. There were intellectuals who had proclaimed this theory in rebellious terms. Bowie was, in many ways, the heir, no matter how perverted, of Andy Warhol's pop art and of the underground culture of the 1960s. He adopted some of the most blaspheme issues and turned them upside down to make them precisely what they had been designed to fight: a commodity.
>Bowie was a protagonist of his times, although a poor musician: to say that Bowie is a musician is like saying that Nero was a harp player (a fact that is technically true, but misleading). Bowie embodies the quintessence of artificial art, raises futulity to paradigm, focuses on the phenomenon rather than the content, makes irrelevant the relevant, and, thus, is the epitome of everything that went wrong with rock music.
>Each element of his art is the emblem of a true artistic movement; however, the ensemble of those emblems constitutes no more than a puzzle, no matter how intriguing, of symbols, a roll of incoherent images projected against the wall at twice the speed, a dictionary of terms rather than a poem, and, in the best of hypotheses, a documentary of the cultural fads of his era.

Based

Attached: 1449449039686.png (145x216, 73K)

He was voted Greatest Entertainer of the 20th Century by the British public.

I am not saying it was high brow experimental music. But he was making in the late 70s music that sounded the way popular music would sound many years later, which to me is a greater merit than being truly avant garde.

An example by another group of artists.
This is Jane's Addiction making typical mid 90s alternative rock in 1986, when on a common radio you would have stuff like Lionel Richie's All Night Long
youtube.com/watch?v=H7zNyXEwCHs

Bowie managed to be that advanced, and it's a true merit

>but he doesn't particularly stand out from the rest of the rock crowd like OP is implying
He absolutely does is what I'm saying. You don't seem to get how popular he is

Glam rock had been a thing by the time he did it, krautrock had been a thing by the time he did it, art rock in the vein of Black Star had been a thing by the time he did it, etc.

Bowie was adventurous and a great artist but not an innovator. H

That's hardly indicative of the his worldwide popularity. How many people voted? Find me something similar before 2016.
No, I grasp his popularity just right. He really doesn't. Bowie's popularity has spiked in the public eye since his death, but fucking Olivia Newton John has sold more albums.

Diamond Dogs has a very early disco song

youtube.com/watch?v=KByxC7B9WH0

disco became popular like 2 or 3 years later
he wasnt perhaps an innovater, but he was a lover of novelty, jumping from novelty to novelty constantly, he seemed to be always a few years advanced in comparison to normal pop music, at least in the 70s.

some musicians are more popular in the rest of the world than in the USA
Bowie is a case of that (an extreme case would be Robbie Williams)

Elton John is an example of the opposite, musicians more popular in the USA than the rest of the world.

I'm aware. Oasis and Queen (before the biopic) aren't popular in the USA relative to Europe. The artists that truly stand out are massively popular in both.

Are you joking? The guy has always been a critical and popular favorite. He has the esteem of being a big mainstream rocker and also an acceptable choice among 'patrician' crowds. There's something of an aura of untouchability about him.

He's the sexiest entertainer that ever was. Everything he ever did oozed sex even when sex wasn't in any way the topic. He also had a HUGE schlong, which some have described as "like an evian bottle".
His songs are fucking great too.

Most critics after Lets Dance disagree with that, besides Black Star of course. I've only noticed this "untouchability" among fans talking about Bowie desu. That's not to say he wasn't untalented but he wasn't a god. I honestly think a big chunk of it has to do with his sex appeal.

Ding ding ding

Bowie was a follower but Station and Low were still top tier

>Outside
>Earthling
>Hours
>Heathen
>Reality
>Next Day
You must only listen to critics that are as much of a pleb as you are

Those are good albums, not untouchable ones.

My point is he has support all around. That so many of these ardent fans exist on a place like Yea Forums, far above any other mainstream rocker, is a testament.

Just that he appeals to hipsters and mainstream fans, really.

>invented music
that's why

maybe you need to listen to . . . eh,lets pick Outside.
listen to it again

Again, what are you confused about? Of course Bowie has a massive fanbase, but just repeating that he's more popular and critically acclaimed than all his contemporaries doesn't make it true.

>just repeating that he's more popular and critically acclaimed than all his contemporaries doesn't make it true.
Of course it's true, retard. He's still remembered and lauded as a genius by tons of casualfags and musicfags. I don't know how you can't see this.

ever get the feeling you are being trolled?

It's not true, and getting emotional doesn't make it so, either. Feel free to look up album sales in regards to "standing out" popularity wise. There's 34 replies in this thread so far, the one right above mine adding nothing to the discussion, yet not one answering OP's question, "What he innovated or directly influenced?"

The point is not the exact degree of popularity, but scope. He's highly regarded in all sorts of places most mainstream rockers aren't.
>"What he innovated or directly influenced?"
The conversation with you has nothing to do with that.

If Bowie had been a true genius, his albums as an old fuck wouldnt have been as good as they were, every album of his from Buddah of Suburbia (1993) on has been either pretty good or very good.

In rock and pop, talent is linked to biology and youth, it isn't like classical music in which the last symphony before dying of a great musician who has been mastering his craft for decades can be the best one.

In pop and rock, geniuses generally have a period of 5-7 years in which everything they touch is gold, and after that they completely run out of talent and publish shitty irrelevant albums for the rest of their lives.
It happened to Stevie Wonder who released only masterpieces from Talking Book to Songs in the Key of Life, and never released a good album again, it happened to Joni Mitchell who has never released a good album since her first late 70s stinker. It happened to Prince, It happened to Billy Corgan, who hasnt really released a good album this millenium.
they all had a great period of less than a decade, and then went down the drain.

Bowie's peak were never that high (especially if you take into consideration he always had collaborators as talented as him or even more talented than him), but as an old fuck in the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s he was still able to create pretty good albums.
He was more hard work and intelligence than pure musical talent

>Joni Mitchell
>Hissing of Summer Lawns 1975
>Hejira 1976
>Don Juan's Reckless Daughter 1977
>Mingus 1979
>Shadows and Light 1980
You wot mate?

Lost me there and I was arguing alongside you til now. Dylan's released two great albums post 50 years old.

every album from Mingus on is shit, except Turbulent Indigo and a late 80s one I forgot

Don Juan Reckless Daughter is the half shit half good album that divides her career, like Machina for Billy Corgan or Journey through the secret life of plants of Stevie Wonder

mingus was good, shadows and light was one of the best live albums ever.
I will agree that it went south in the 80s, but in the 70s she was solid