I&#x27;m afraid I don&#x27;t buy that. Music follows rules, rules that we all grew up internalizing. There&#x27;s no &quot;universal music&quot;, just music who&#x27;s rules you are familiar with. Tweak those rules just enough and in the right way and you are innovative (see: The Beatles). Tweak them too much and you are simply avant garde (see: Captain Beefheart).<p>That means that music is without question a social construction. Simply look at how non-western music is so radically different from popular western music, yet still appealing within those cultures.<p>It&#x27;s very possible Bowie could have been too avant garde or too much of an outsider, but what he excelled at was tweaking the establishment <i>just enough</i> (both musically and performance-wise) to find a huge audience whilst still being &quot;outside&quot; the mainstream.