Discovery by Daft Punk

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

David Bowie

Glam rock as mythmaking, subversive performance art.

The decadent-alien-rock-star concept behind David Bowie’s fifth album was revolutionary, but the subversion was in the music: nasty but glamorous (“Moonage Daydream,” “Suffragette City”), theatrical but intimate (“Five Years”), primordial punk (“Hang On to Yourself”), and cabaret for an audience who would’ve never deigned (“Rock ’n’ Roll Suicide”). Bowie talks about himself in the third person but is so arrogant his fans kill him for it (“Ziggy Stardust”), so deluded he thinks rock ’n’ roll can save the world but so brave he’s willing to die trying (“Star”). The artifice brings him down, but it also sets him free.

The album helped loosen binaries around gender, sexuality, performance, and identity. But it also helped broaden the vocabulary of mainstream rock more generally, drawing on concepts from the underground. Calling him flighty or inauthentic missed the point: Like Andy Warhol, Bowie treated his art in part as a synthesis of his interests. For all the ways it was radical at the time, Ziggy Stardust also pointed to a referential, hyperlinked future we’re all familiar with—curation as creation.

“This was his song about Jimi Hendrix. First time he saw Jimi Hendrix in London, everybody hating on Jimi, but he was so open he could admit it and make a hit out of that man.”

Q-Tip

on “Ziggy Stardust”

Discovery

Daft Punk

Electronic music as comforting and familiar as classic rock.

The album’s biggest singles—“One More Time,” “Harder Better Faster Stronger,” “Digital Love”—were as useful to wedding DJs as they were to pop philosophers. And the rest—the faux-metal guitars of “Aerodynamic,” the sci-fi daydream of “Veridis Quo,” the UK garage showcase of Todd Edwards on “Face to Face”—glimpsed down dozens of stylistic alleyways without disrupting the album’s course. “Electronic music”—a term that always suggested the future, however vague—was demonstrated to be as familiar and comforting as classic rock, and no less real in its depth of feeling.

“Their take on funk, disco, soft rock, or ’80s pop never sounds nostalgic. It’s more like a dream of the future. In every Daft Punk song, you can hear timeless musical techniques.”

Chilly Gonzales

producer and collaborator

You can easily trace Discovery forward to EDM and the continuing entwinement of techno and rock. But you can also trace it back to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band or Pet Sounds and Smile: music that took pop seriously as art, but also recontextualized older, seemingly uncool styles in ways that felt progressive and fresh. Most of all, though, Daft Punk wanted to be universal. And as implausible as it may have seemed for two French men in robot helmets, Discovery got them there.

Apple Music 100 Best Albums

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars

Discovery