David Bowie is, without a doubt, one of those public figures of whom basically everyone on earth has a memory of. Whether you went through a misanthropic teenage phase where you listened to “Life On Mars” on repeat and felt like no one in the world understood you, started experimenting with crazy makeup because of Bowie’s badass beauty prowess, or were simultaneously terrified and turned on by him as the Goblin King in Labyrinth (that was me), he was somewhere in all of our lives, and it’s with an incredibly heavy heart that we learned this morning that David Bowie has passed away at the age of 69.
Bowie’s son revealed on Monday morning that his father had “died peacefully surrounded by his family” after an 18-month cancer battle. What kind of cancer Bowie had was not revealed, and it really doesn’t matter, but the fact that none of us knew he was sick and that he only just released an album, Blackstar, made this loss all the more jarring.
Without a doubt, Bowie will be missed. Hopefully he can rest in peace, and we’ll keep his memory and all he did for the arts alive for a long time to come.