In the 1990's, the only music that ever came on the radio seemed to be from another batch of likely lads telling tales of adolescence and the English nightlife. To listen to a song from any one of the Britpop bands was to instantly feel a connection between your own life and theirs, and that was the whole point - Britpop was all about bands you could have a drink in the pub with.

I was quite a big fan of music growing up, but never broadened my horizons as, after all, I was only a child. Then I remember my mom taking her old record player downstairs from the loft and putting on two of her old vinyls - Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division and Life On Mars by David Bowie.

Of course, I was instantly blew away by the latter. The melancholic tones of Ian Curtis weren't enough to grab my childish attention, but David Bowie's piercing falsetto and perfect cinematic imagery had me hooked. A couple of years later, just at the beginning of my teen years, I picked up the David Bowie Collection for around five pound. I fell in love with every single song and I have since gone on to buy almost the entire David Bowie discography (only to have them all stolen later).

Out of all of the Bowie songs I have heard and owned, Ziggy Stardust remains my all time favourite. It encapsulates that euphoric feeling of being on top of the world, being everything you want to be - along with Rebel Rebel, which narrowly missed out here as my favourite Bowie track, it spoke out to me during my teenage years and made me feel like I could be something more than a Parka wearing dunder-headed lad-about-town.

Granted, the song isn't as full of optimism as I am making out. It indicates that Ziggy Stardust (a character for whom I idolised more and more throughout my teen years, almost obsessively) wasn't as perfect a creation as all the girls who he could 'lick by smiling' thought he was. But as I was going through puberty, I wanted to be Ziggy Stardust, regardless of the pitfalls. And for me, that's what good music is all about.