Hunky Dory is the first David Bowie album I owned. At the time, I would have preferred Let's Dance, but I couldn't convince my mom to buy it for me on just any ol' day. So, I was waiting to receive it on my birthday, which was months away.

I had $4 saved up and was looking through the bargain basement cassette tapes at the new drugstore in town.

I remember the store's grand opening, which drew the salt-of-the-earth townspeople with free soda, hotdogs, and balloons. These were balloons filled with helium, not just plain air, and attached by string, not long, thin, white plastic sticks meant to create the illusion of floating.

In the store's bargain bin, I found Hunky Dory, an album released by Bowie in 1971. It was 1983, and the cassette was $1.99. I bought it. I listened. I thought, "This is terrible. I can't believe I wasted my savings on this."

In actuality, I was afraid of the music.

But I kept listening, and my assessment changed from "terrible" to "strange." The music came from a place I didn't understand. It made me feel new things. It gave me the intuition that life could be more interesting than a free balloon.

Before I knew it, Hunky Dory was the best thing ever. When I eventually received Let's Dance for my birthday, I loved it immediately. However, in the 40 years since then, I've listened to Hunky Dory many, many, more times.

Retrospectively, Hunky Dory has been critically acclaimed as one of Bowie's best works and features on several lists of the greatest albums of all time. Within the context of his career, it is considered to be the album where 'Bowie starts to become Bowie', definitively discovering his voice and style. --

The album did the same for me.