Streaming Part 2 – The Golden Years
It is no news that each of those three albums are classic ones. One thing is absolutely unique there still. If one checks the tracklist of David Bowie early live albums – David Live / Stage / Ziggy Stardust the Motion Picture – or his first major best of Changesonebowie from 1976, they all left out both Life On Mars? and Starman. We are speaking about the two most remembered hits from those years. It is truly unique that near-unknown songs from that time ended up as absolute must-haves decades later, ultimately topping all legitimate hits from the 70s.
Streaming results are obviously much higher than those of previous albums. Hunky Dory two singles add for 94 million plays and two album tracks Oh! You Pretty Things and Queen Bitch have notable streams for non-singles too, although the former was a #11 song for Peter Noone in 1971. All its tracks are breaking the doors of the 2 million plays barrier.
Ziggy Stardust album is even stronger overall. Starman, Ziggy Stardust and Moonage Daydream are all on 30 million and more while everything else is on at least 3,3 million. In terms of equivalent album sales, those two albums total near half a million units.
Surprisingly, Aladdin Sane is much weaker. We can highlight its cult status by the fact all songs are at least on 1,7 million but its hits are truly lacking strength as even the stand-out track The Jean Genie is still under 10 million.
The Greatest solo artist in history.
That will be Michael Jackson
Best selling solo artist of all time, but not most important or most influential solo artist of all time.
That’s just your opinion, mine is he is very overrated and his sales are poor considering he is supposed to be that good. Half a dozen very good songs doesn’t make you the greatest.
Yes, Jacksons sales and popularity are amazing and his influence immense but Bowie was way, way more diverse than Jackson.
It’s so irritating when people can’t wrap their heads around the fact that sales aren’t everything. Sales are great but they don’t indicate how inventive, creative, influential, etc. an artist was/is.
Who cares. Musical diversity and critical acclaim is so overrated.
Lots of people care, lots of people don’t want to listen to an artist who just releases the same sounding stuff over and over again.
As for critical acclaim, I couldn’t give a toss about it either.
“That’s just your opinion”
It’s all about opinions, except if you believe that talent should be measured by success, which would be very dumb.
Also the version of All The Young Dudes with Ian Hunter and Bowie on vocals on the Mott The Hoople page doesn’t show up on his features.
Just noticed that a number of Bowie songs have recently been been greyed out on spotify and their totals no longer show on the spotify tool report.They’re all on the albums Platinum Collection and Sound + Vision.
Also for some reason the songs credited to Bowie and the Spider on the Bowie at the Beeb album have a separate artist id??