Aladdin Sane (2013 Remaster)

The album that bid farewell to David Bowie\'s superstar-making Ziggy Stardust persona—as well as his longtime touring band The Spiders From Mars—essentially gave the glam-rock era a swift kick instead of a goodbye kiss. Theatrical, openly decadent, and aggressively muscular in a way he must have known would be difficult to top, Bowie indulges himself in everything from cabaret melodrama (“Time”) and over-amped Bo Diddley conceits (“The Jean Genie”) to retro rollicking (“Watch That Man” and an antic cover of the Stones\' “Let\'s Spend the Night Together”). The tolls of his whirlwind first American tour are evident in the excesses and ruin of “Drive-In Saturday,” “Cracked Actor,” and “Panic in Detroit,” while “The Prettiest Star” and “Lady Grinning Soul” offer prescient hints at the elastic R&B reinvention that lay just a couple years ahead.