Janelle Monáe claims to have gone back in time to get a dose of inspiration from David Bowie's alter ego Ziggy Stardust.
Monáe brought up the late musician during her Rolling Stone Musicians on Musicians chat with boygenius member Lucy Dacus. During their sit-down, Monáe recalled seeing a performance of the Ziggy Stardust Tour in the 1970s, although it would have been impossible since the artist, who uses she/they pronouns, was born in 1985. The tour in question took place in 1972-3. (There was a documentary/concert film of the tour released in 1979, and it has been released in various formats and versions several times over the decades, as recently as 2023.)
"I’ve always loved transforming, and I think that’s what I love about Halloween, and that’s what I love about world building through music," said The Age of Pleasure artist. "I think when I saw David Bowie..."
"You saw him?" asked Dacus.
"I did," Monáe insisted. "I traveled back into the 1970s and I saw him do [The Rise and Fall of] Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and it was incredible."
Monáe added that she was "backstage" when she caught inspiration from Bowie, who she's long cited as an inspiration.
"I was like, ‘This is what I want to do,’ and so I jetted back to the 2000s, and I was like, 'I can have the musical, make the music, create the lyrics and create community around transformation and being queer — and not even in sexuality, but just in how we see the world,'" she explained.
While Dacus was slightly taken aback by Monáe's recollection, the vocalist has referenced Bowie in her work before, covering his songs like "Moonage Daydream" and "Heroes." A bodysuit Bowie wore during his circa-1973 Aladdin Sane era served as inspiration for perhaps Monáe's most famous outfit, the pants from her "Pynk" video.
In a 2018 interview with Complex, Monáe said that Bowie was "so interesting" to her. "The world that he built out inspired me to build out my own world, as well. It let me know that I didn’t just have to be a singer," she said. "I didn’t just have to be an actor. I could mesh both mediums and tell stories… Bowie has inspired not just me, but so many artists with his work and with his vision."
Bowie died in 2016 after a battle with liver cancer, just two days after the release of his final album, Blackstar.
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