It is interesting to note that for David Bowie to achieve his greatest success, he must write about the macabre.

Bowie first entered the world-wide musical arena when he created Major Tom, an astronaut who dies/floats in space.

Next, the title track of MWSTW dealt with characters who "died alone, a long, long time ago."

But Bowie's biggest breakthrough was with Ziggy Stardust.
It opens with earth's dying.
It closes with a suicide.
The main character of the album is killed by his fans.
Death, not Ziggy, is the star of this album.

Bowie is now realizing that he must write about death to achieve huge success. Aladdin Sane is a good album but perhaps the death references are too vague. Perhaps the average listener does not understand the characters are living on the brink of holocaust and that "Lady Grinning Soul" is an anagram of "ghoul"

So, Diamond Dogs opens up with the first line, "and in the death...." and Bowie is sure to include fleas, rats, skeletons, decay, and "death in the fog." This album is littered with hunters and poachers; it definitely has kill appeal

Bowie next became the Thin White Duke, a living skeleton whose future corpses are possiby sitting in the arenas, cheering him onward.

Ashes To Ashes is a song about death and drug addiction. Major Tom is smelling funky.

Even the Serious Moonlight concerts had Bowie dragging the skull around again.

But Bowie's greatest ode to death is Outside. This time the centerpiece of the album is a 14 year old girl whose entrails are spread across a museum entrance and her torso is impaled upside down. What a fantastic death abyss.

So Bowie must return again and again to the macabre just as the Earthling had his brains blown out and the Heathen can "feel it die".