History Music / TheRiseAndFallOfZiggyStardustAndTheSpidersFromMars

* UnbuiltTrope: The album already begins examining many popular [[TheRockstar Rockstar]] tropes in a more nuanced way. showing the pitfalls of the Rock N' Roll lifestyle and the rise to fame. But Ziggy himself would be a major inspiration and popularizer for rock stars to come. The aesthetic of rock stars with facepaint and makeup would be popularized through Ziggy and other GlamRock artists, influencing subsequent music genres such as PunkRock and its various subgenres as well as GlamMetal.

Conceived after the songs were already finished, the ambiguous story of this ConceptAlbum revolves around Ziggy Stardust, a bisexual rock star (either from space or TouchedByVorlons) who rises to stardom in a time when Earth is on its last legs and its people need hope. But he succumbs to the hedonistic lifestyle that comes with fame, and it's his own fans who are responsible for his death. Ironically Bowie himself nearly fell into the same trap, as "Ziggy Stardust" became such a global phenomenon that he did everything to distance himself from the "Ziggy" character, in essence reinventing himself each album.

* OfficiallyShortenedTitle: The 1990 and 1999 remasters shortens the album's memorably unwieldy title to ''Ziggy Stardust''; the full title is still included on the CD and LP disc labels (as well as on cassette labels outside North America), however.

* OfficiallyShortenedTitle: The 1990 remaster shortens the album's memorably unwieldy title to ''Ziggy Stardust''; the full title is still included on the CD and LP disc labels, however.

''The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars'' (often shortened to ''Ziggy Stardust'' or even just ''Ziggy'') is the fifth studio album by Music/DavidBowie, released in 1972. "Ziggy Stardust", "Starman", "Suffragette City" and "Rock 'N' Roll Suicide" were big international hits at the time.

* LongTitle: The album title is so long that the record is generally just referred to as "Ziggy Stardust".

* ReCut: After "Starman" became Bowie's most successful single since "Music/SpaceOddity", the British division of Creator/RCARecords went back to the album before release and altered the UK edition to both replace the album mix of "Starman" with the single one and fix a dropout on "Suffragette City". However, RCA would prioritize the US edition of the album worldwide, to the point where their CD releases exclusively used it. Reissues since 1990 combine elements of the two versions, featuring the album mix of "Starman" like the US edition but fixing the dropout on "Suffragette City" like the UK one.

* RearrangeTheSong: "Moonage Daydream" and "Hang On to Yourself" were originally released by [=B&C=] Records as two sides of a 1971 non-album single with the Arnold Corns, made while Bowie's manager was weaseling the artist out of his contract with Creator/PhilipsRecords and Creator/MercuryRecords out of discontent with the labels' practices. For this album, Bowie re-recorded both songs from the ground up with the Spiders from Mars. Following the success of this album, [=B&C=] [[RereleaseTheSong reissued the original single]] with the sides switched around.

* WritingAroundTrademarks: Since 2012, reissues of the album feature a disc label design patterned after the original RCA design from the 1970s, but with a stylized "Bowie" in place of the RCA logo. Parlophone's reissues go a step further and use the actual font that RCA used for their logotype. This would occur again with ''Music/AladdinSane'' in 2013, and would become standard for Parlophone's reissues of the Bowie back-catalog from 2015 onwards (with modifications to match each album's respective UK LP label). Perhaps not coincidentally, ''Ziggy Stardust'' and ''Aladdin Sane'' are the only two albums that Parlophone never remastered during their gradual reissuing campaign, instead choosing to recycle EMI's 40th anniversary remasters for both.

* CoverVersion: The only song on the album not written by Bowie is a cover of Ron Davies' "It Ain't Easy"... not that you can tell without looking at the credits, as Davies is still a fairly obscure artist to this day.
** Additionally, the lyrics of it aren't even printed on the liner notes
* DiscountLesbians: If one goes with the interpretation that Ziggy is TouchedByVorlons, then he's a discount bisexual.

* UnbuiltTrope: The album already begins examining many popular [[TheRockstar Rockstar]] tropes in a more nuanced way. showing the pitfalls of the Rock N' Roll lifestyle and the rise to fame. But Ziggy himself would be a major inspiration for rock stars to come. The aesthetic of rock stars with facepaint and makeup would be popularized through Ziggy and other GlamRock artists, influencing subsequent music genres such as PunkRock and its various subgenres as well as GlamMetal.

** The punk band Music/{{Crass}} took its name from the line "the kids were just crass" in "Ziggy Stardust".

* SpecialGuest: According to biographer Nicholas Pegg, Music/{{Yes}} keyboardist and longtime Bowie collaborator Music/RickWakeman plays harpsichord on "It Ain't Easy", his final contribution to a Bowie album.

* SpiritualSuccessor: ''Music/AladdinSane'', which is about a Ziggy expy touring the U.S.; Bowie himself maintained the Ziggy character on-stage while promoting the album, ultimately retiring the character after he was done doing that.

** The starman in "Starman" is inspired by the Starchild in ''Film/TwoThousandOneASpaceOdyssey''. Also, the chorus is loosely based on "[[Film/TheWizardOfOz Somewhere Over the Rainbow]]", and the song also has musical references to [[Music/MarcBolan T. Rex]] and the Diana Ross and the Supremes hit "[[Creator/{{Motown}} You Keep Me Hangin' On]]".

* RearrangeTheSong: "Moonage Daydream" and "Hang On to Yourself" were originally released by [=B&C=] Records as two sides of a 1971 non-album single with the Arnold Corns, made while Bowie was weaseling his way out of his contract with Creator/PhilipsRecords and Creator/MercuryRecords following a feud with executives regarding the cover art to ''Music/TheManWhoSoldTheWorld''. For this album, Bowie re-recorded both songs from the ground up with the Spiders from Mars. Following the success of this album, [=B&C=] [[RereleaseTheSong reissued the original single]] with the sides switched around.