The death last week of David Bowie attracted so much media coverage that there were bound to be commentators complaining that it was overdone, which I suppose it was.

On the other hand, it is hard to think of anyone in the music business of comparable influence. Only, I suppose, his Bobness, Mr Dylan, whose own passing – let it be long away – will surely lead to publicity unprecedented.

At risk of being thought ridiculous, it seemed to me that Bowie’s status as a songwriter deserved comparison with an equally long enduring act who also gave us hit after hit.

I refer to the Bee Gees, distinctly less fashionable, of course – indeed, often the butt of unfair mickey-taking – but undoubtedly songwriters of huge versatility.

Like Bowie they were among the best who “found out musical tunes”, in that choice phrase from Ecclesiasticus chapter 44. The excellence of this description comes in the supposition of the existence of God-given melody simply waiting to be discovered.

The Prime Minister, David Cameron, was among many eager to pay tribute to Bowie, the most surprising of whom was the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby. Can the coke-snorting, free-loving rock legend really be a model for the Christian life?

Cameron referred to Bowie’s having supplied “the soundtrack” of his life, a pat phrase that slipped easily to the lips of many others.

Had he supplied the soundtrack to mine? I wondered, before concluding that he had probably not. I do, however, associate the singer with a few memorable moments in my existence, the first being in 1969 at the time of the Apollo moon landing.

I have a vivid memory of the long-haired, hippyish singer performing a simple version of Space Oddity, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar on a black-and-white news programme – probably BBC2’s Late Night Line Up.

Heroes, released in 1977, I associate with the death of my father. I remember discussing the album with a friend on a train journey from King’s Cross on the day he died.

The album’s title track was, and is, one of my favourite Bowie songs. It is in fact the only favourite I have in common with Will Hodgkinson, the rock critic of The Times, who last Tuesday gave us his Bowie top 10.

These included the well-known Life on Mars and Quicksand, both from Hunky Dory, Moonage Daydream from Ziggy Stardust, All the Young Dudes, which he wrote for Mott the Hoople, The Jean Genie (Aladdin Sane), Sound and Vision (Low) and Young Americans from the album of the same name.

Less obvious were Let Me Sleep Beside You, from a BBC session in 1969, and I Can’t Give Everything Away from the recent release Blackstar.

So what would be my alternatives?

One would definitely be Teenage Wildlife, from 1980’s Scary Monsters (& Super Creeps) which, besides having a fabulous tune, contains a memorable putdown of a new generation of young rock performers. The lyric runs: “As ugly as a teenage millionaire/Pretending it’s a whizz kid world/You’ll take me aside and say ’Well, David, what shall I do/They wait for me in the hallway?’/I’ll say, ‘Don’t ask me, I don’t know any hallways.’.”

There are witty words, too, in the apocalyptic Five Years, Ziggy Stardust’s opening track and another of my top 10. One section runs: “I think I saw you in an ice cream parlour/Drinking milkshakes cold and long/Smiling and waving and looking so fine/Don’t think you knew you were in this song.”

Another definite for my list is Absolute Beginners, a 1986 single recorded as the title song for the film version of Colin MacInnes’s novel of the same name. The song needs to be played at massive volume, as it was when first I heard it, blasted from a radio as I waited for attention at a tyre depot in Yarnton.

My other favourites, listed without comment, are Drive-in Saturday, Slip Away (from 2002’s Heathen), Days (from 2003’s Reality), China Girl, Station to Station and Wild is the Wind. The last demonstrates what is often denied, that Bowie was a great singer.