The best albums of 1972

By MATT NEAL

May 16, 2012, 5:57 a.m.

David Bowie in 1973 in costume as Ziggy Stardust.

THERE was something special going on 40 years ago - the amount of great albums that came out in 1972 is truly impressive.

So impressive that we had to turn to the

And for the record, I would have liked to see Randy Newman's

The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars - David Bowie

THIS iconic glam rock concept album is pretty close to the perfect record. It features a loosely unifying concept - the end of the world and the arrival of an alien prophet - yet every song stands alone, with each tune feeling distinctive and different but somehow cohesive with the whole. It tackles the universal and the personal, it's dynamic in both its message and music, it's danceable and cerebral, and it created a springboard for a live visual package, with Bowie taking on the persona of the guitar-slinging ET messiah Ziggy Stardust (described as being "well hung with a snow-white tan" - not a stretch for the future Thin White Duke). "I couldn't decide whether I was writing the characters, or whether the characters were writing me, or whether we were all one and the same," Bowie later said (drugs may have been a factor in that state of mind). The pinnacle of his career,

Here's Starman, live in 1972. RIP Mick Ronson: