★ has for me the most emotional immediacy of all Bowie's albums because of what was going on in my life at the time of its release. I was playing a D&D game wherein I was playing a glam-rock bard named "Cherry", and I'd based him off Bowie and his illimitable roleplaying ability on stage. We'd started the campaign a couple months before ★ came out. When ★ came out, ked and I listened to the album that very day. We made it an event: turned on the faerie lights, banished the children, and poured ourselves rum and whiskey, respectively. A couple days later we were playing that D&D game with our friends, and I just kept going on about that album. No one really shared my enthusiasm for Bowie, but they were curious about why I'd based my character on Bowie. So I pulled up some photos of Bowie back in his glam rock days and showed them around. People kind of shrugged. But the next day, while I was out shopping, my friends in our group chat started melting down about Bowie's death. The announcement had just been made. I was like "What? Bowie died?" I just stared at my phone in disbelief, and at that moment I realized "Space Oddity" was playing over the supermarket sound system. It was a surreal moment. Then my friend, who'd just shrugged about how I'd been gushing over Bowie the night before, called me up in tears and asked if I wanted to have a drink with him. Because Bowie had died. So he brought over a bottle of whiskey, and we drank it while I spun Bowie. I think my friend just wanted an excuse to drink.
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