Despite the irony, the ageless rock icon has left us behind at the age of 69.
David Bowie dies of cancer at 69
Singer David Bowie has died at the age of 69 after suffering from cancer.
His son director Duncan Jones confirmed the news and a statement was released on his official social media accounts.
"David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with
cancer," it said.
"While many of you will share in this loss, we ask that you respect the family's privacy during their time of grief."
The singer only released his latest album Blackstar on his birthday on Friday.
His last live performance was at a New York charity
concert in 2006.
Blackstar, which includes just seven songs, has been well received by critics.
Bowie's breakthrough came with 1972's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.
Today's news is all the more shocking because David Bowie had recently emerged from suspended animation - revitalised and reinvigorated.
His two latest albums, The Next Day and Blackstar, ranked with his best, the former celebrating his past, the latter casting forward to the future. The fact he won't be there is heartbreaking.
But then Bowie's entire career has been a vanishing act. The son of a waitress and a nightclub owner, David Jones became David Bowie, who became Ziggy Stardust, who became Aladdin Sane, who became the Thin White Duke. All of them were fictitious. All of them became iconic.
In the 1970s, he was restless, flitting between musical styles and personas, producing Lou Reed and The Stooges, and taking up painting in Berlin. His every move sparked impersonators and inspired musical sub-genres. He was the first post-modern pop star.
He struggled to remain relevant in the 1980s and 90s, but continued to push boundaries with the industrial rock of Outside and the drum and bass influenced Earthling. An enforced hiatus, prompted by emergency angioplasty, took him out of the spotlight for most of the 2000s before that celebrated, unexpected comeback on his 66th birthday.
That late period of creativity may now be reassessed as the work of a musician who knew his time was running out. But it remains a fitting legacy for a man who subverted and reinvented pop time and time again.
His hits include Let's Dance, Space Oddity, Heroes, Under Pressure, Rebel, Rebel, Life on Mars and Suffragette City.
He was also well known for creating his flamboyant alter ego Ziggy Stardust.
Space Oddity
He also carved out an acting career including his role as an alien seeking help for his dying planet in Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth in 1976.
He did a three-month stint as The Elephant Man on Broadway in the 1980s.
Bowie also starred in Marlene Dietrich's last film, Just a Gigolo (1978), and played Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988).
Bowie was born David Jones in London on 8 January in 1947 but Bowie changed his name in 1966 after The Monkees' Davy Jones achieved stardom.
He was in several bands before he signed with Mercury Records, which released his album Man of Words, Man of Music in 1969, which included Space Oddity, his first UK number one.
