Rolling Stone (7/20/72, p.54) - "...David Bowie has pulled off his complex task with consummate style, with some great rock & roll...with all the wit and passion required to give it sufficient dimension and with a deep sense of humanity that regularly emerges from behind the star facade...I'd give it at least a 99." Q (p.108) - 5 stars out of 5 -- "[E]ach immortally sculpted tune carries a mood of its own." Q (1/03, p.69) - Included in Q Magazine's "100 Greatest Albums Ever" Q (5/97, pp.135-6) - 5 Stars (out of 5) - "...Bowie's one true complete masterwork....arguably changed more people's lives in one fell swoop than any before or since." Q (6/00, p.76) - Ranked #25 in Q's "100 Greatest British Albums" - "...Turned the rock world upside down, a sci-fi psychodrama garnished with the scattergun glam guitar of Bowie's silver-haired foil and sidekick, Mick Ronson....Made in Britain, but concieved in a galaxy far away." Q (11/99, pp.140-1) - 5 stars out of 5 - "...sealed Bowie's fate, book-ended by 2 of his finest slowburners, 'Five Years' and 'Rock'n'Roll Suicide'..." Uncut (8/02, p.98) - 5 out of 5 - "...redefined not just how pop could sound, but how it could think..." Mojo (Publisher) (p.100) - 4 stars out of 5 -- "ZIGGY...remains a pivotal work....With Bowie fired up by a hunger for recognition and sidekick Mick Ronson at his most inspired." Mojo (Publisher) (2/02, p.84) - "...Besides the dazzling conceptual framework - rock'n'roll with such a sense of otherness that it was actually extra-terrestrial - there are somne great songs too..." NME (Magazine) (10/2/93, p.29) - Ranked #40 in NME's list of the 'Greatest Albums Of All Time.' NME (Magazine) (9/18/93, p.18) - Ranked # 7 in NME's list of the 'Greatest Albums Of The '70s' - "...A gloriously manufactured, futuristic rock opera which heads toward its inevitably tragic finale on Mick Ronson's mighty power chords..."

Rovi

Borrowing heavily from Marc Bolan's glam rock and the future shock of A Clockwork Orange, David Bowie reached back to the heavy rock of The Man Who Sold the World for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Constructed as a loose concept album about an androgynous alien rock star named Ziggy Stardust, the story falls apart quickly, yet Bowie's fractured, paranoid lyrics are evocative of a decadent, decaying future, and the music echoes an apocalyptic, nuclear dread. Fleshing out the off-kilter metallic mix with fatter guitars, genuine pop songs, string sections, keyboards, and a cinematic flourish, Ziggy Stardust is a glitzy array of riffs, hooks, melodrama, and style and the logical culmination of glam. Mick Ronson plays with a maverick flair that invigorates rockers like "Suffragette City," "Moonage Daydream," and "Hang Onto Yourself," while "Lady Stardust," "Five Years," and "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" have a grand sense of staged drama previously unheard of in rock & roll. And that self-conscious sense of theater is part of the reason why Ziggy Stardust sounds so foreign. Bowie succeeds not in spite of his pretensions but because of them, and Ziggy Stardust -- familiar in structure, but alien in performance -- is the first time his vision and execution met in such a grand, sweeping fashion. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Rovi