Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of Pop Chart History from Slate magazine, about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Malanfi, chart analyst, pop critic,

and writer of Slate's Why Is This Song Number One series on our last episode. We chronicled how

David Jones became David Bowie, Rock's ultimate shapeshifter. Even as he went through all of his 70s changes, from the space oddity

to Ziggy Stardust, a young American soulman to the thin white duke, Boe also took on and took

off Pop stardom like a cloak, whether he was galvanizing glam rock,

topping the charts with funk, or escaping to Berlin to become a Cold War hero.

We're now entering the 1980s, and David Bowie is about to make a colorful pop comeback

that will turn his previous chart-topping forays into ashes.

Bowie Phase 5, the original new waiver.

During his first decade of hit-making, David Bowie's stardom in his British homeland differed considerably

from his chart performance in America. In the U.S., Bowie was a star. In the U.K., he was a megastar.

Several of his peak glam-era LPs topped the British album chart. None hit

number one in America.

And though he hadn't had a

UK number one LP

since the era of Aladdin

Sane and Diamond Dogs,

even Bowie's quirkier

LPs from the Berlin

period consistently made the UK top five.

Whereas all of the Berlin LPs fell short of the top 10 in America. The U.S. generally liked Bowie's

...