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Bowie certainly ranks up there, and he is a legend, but I felt that when it came to The Mid-80's, Tin Machine, and a good amount of his 90's music, he slightly slipped. Still, when it comes to returning to form and still adapting to changes, as well as dealing with the business side of things (especially in his parting ways with MainMan) he's a clear winner in that. Also, in viewing his entire career, he had quite a slow start as the world rejected his Deram recordings until he became Ziggy and his Early 70's saw him trying out things that still did not seriously fit perfectly despite having some wonderful songs. It was finding the right image and taking it from there, especially with excellent musicians helping out.

To me most of his appeal is certainly that of an artist in a great world of his own, more Artistic than Street Level. He helped pioneer or popularize a lot - Music Promotion (Videos), Glam, Punk (Ziggy's comparatively short hair in the era of Boogie), androgynous images, the brief but still stylish New Romantics (The Thin White Duke era), Ambient (Low and 'Heroes'), Synths in music, Gothic (Ziggy's influence on the early days of that), and on and on.

Still, when it came to the final effect, it's more of a great actor who got caught up in music instead who knows how to whip up classic songs and concepts. He's a great singer and a brilliant showman who learned by trial and error while not worrying if he ever made another mistake.

Still, I believe that a some of Bowie's style was certainly sparked by observing a certain "Performance" by one Mick Jagger, and that's a serious compliment to both Jagger's only great film (any other film so far has been pretty weak...must be a Deal with the Devil in there, somewhere...ha ha) and Bowie's stage presence and music. Remember, "The only performance that makes it, that makes it all the way, is the one that achieves madness!" are the words to think about.

By throwing in a lot of artistic influences, he succeeded.

I'm convinced that those were words Bowie learned from as he was exiting his "laughing Gnome" stage.
Throw in some influence of The Velvet Underground and The Stooges, and one has a small part of what went into what made his style great.