On January 10, 2016, David Bowie passed away at age 69 after a year and a half of battling cancer. What we lost was not only one of the greatest musicians of our generation, but also a person who has had a great impact on pop culture as a whole. Bowie’s changing styles through wildly differing personas, most notably Ziggy Stardust, inspired pop acts such as Madonna and Lady GaGa to embrace their eccentric personalities. Bowie’s lyrics showed a perspective on life from the viewpoint of an outsider.

What David Bowie did for people was he gave those who felt like outsiders a voice in popular culture. Little did David Bowie know that his influences were felt all over the world, and not just in his home country of Great Britain. For example, when Nirvana covered “The Man Who Sold the World” at their Unplugged concert, Bowie was “blown away” that Kurt Cobain liked his work. What made sense, however, was that Kurt Cobain, who was a very famous grunge musician at the time, felt like he was an outsider and probably identified heavily with Bowie’s embrace of characteristics that would qualify others as “outsiders” by society’s standards.

After his death, his influence on popular culture became even clearer. The day after he died, the Sirius Radio station The Bridge, which plays soft classic rock, dedicated a large portion of their morning to taking calls from listeners to talk about their feelings or opinions on David Bowie. People called in and shared how Bowie made them comfortable being themselves, about how they dressed like him, about being at peace with coming out, and about how timeless they felt David Bowie’s style  was.

Bowie’s greatest quality, perhaps, was his ability to positively influence those who looked up to him. People often look up to or compare themselves to celebrities, and if those celebrities have Bowie’s self-confidence and acceptance of their uniqueness, then those qualities can be passed down to fans, and the cycle lives on.

David Bowie’s legacy is one that will live on forever, because he influenced generations of pop culture figures in their self image and their confidence with being themselves.