This is the record where Bowie first sounds like Bowie. He had been circling a hit for years, trying on folk and music-hall and whatever else might stick, and on this 1969 album he finally landed one, the song that opens it and the one almost everyone here has come for. It is the album that introduced Major Tom, the astronaut who walks into the first track and never quite leaves your head. The timing was uncanny. The world was looking up, fixated on rockets and the men strapped to them, hungry for anything that matched the moment, and here was a young songwriter handing it a launch sequence set to strings. The rest of the album is a writer still finding his footing, reaching for ideas he would nail later. But the opening track changed everything, including his name.