Sorry I'm late, maybe nobody is in the mood to go back to the David Bowie passing and questions of whether he was a genius. I will say right off the bat that I generally don't trust that major musicians are as creative as history writes them to be. I've read too much stuff basically saying the managers and labels trot these guys (mostly, they're guys) out there and tells them what to wear and what to play.
But we live in a culture where the 'cult of personality' is engrained, kids have posters of these performers on the wall, not posters of some manager or record executive celebrating them for quite literally making their favorite star what they are. These ideas were always in my head somewhere but they crystalized I think when I watched a Bill Withers interview or two last night. Frankly it seems to me that we give performers much more credit than they deserve, unless they are performers who, like Bill Withers or John Hartford, have the integrity to go their own way when the label starts trying to box them in.
I also just don't think Bowie had much to say and frankly it seems like a shame that so many people were influenced by him or 'got inspiration' from him. This isn't anything against him in particular. Our culture seems to be a lot of the blind leading the blind - people gobbling up the words of other people, when the fact is, those other people just aren't saying much of any value - whether advertisers, screen-writers, journalists or music performers.