Any one who has ever seen or heard Janelle Monáe knows that she’s very much out there in the best ways possible. Now, we know just how far out there she is: Circa 1972 at a David Bowie concert.
Yes, as she revealed during in a recent chat with Lucy Dacus for Rolling Stone’s Musicians on Musicians series, Monáe is a time traveler. (So, is that more Bill and Ted or, like, The Time Traveler’s Wife?) And at some point in her early career, she harnessed the space-time continuum itself to go see Bowie and his band perform during the tour for The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
“I traveled back into the 1970s and I saw him do Ziggy Stardust and it was incredible,” Monáe said. I mean, I maybe would’ve instead stopped the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or shuffled Baby Hitler off this mortal coil. Still, a nice concert after some chrono-skipping sounds lovely, too. Check out the clip below.
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Now, you’re likely feeling exactly like Dacus looked: A little shocked, and maybe even a tiny bit incredulous to boot. But open your ears and your mind, as what Monáe says next really matters.
“I was backstage, and this is what I want to do,” Monáe continued. “And so I jetted back to, you know, the 2000s. And I was like, ‘I can have the musical, make the music, create the lyrics, and create community around transformation and being queer.’ And not even just in sexuality, but in how we see the world.”
Yes, slack-jawed reader, this whole thing is likely a creative little metaphor for Monáe’s own connection to Bowie’s music, and how it gave her the courage to embrace her own chameleon-esque powers of artistic reinvention and genre-smashing personal growth. (I mean, she nigh literally transformed into Michael Jackson at the 2025 Grammys.) Monáe simply experienced the Thin White Duke in such a deeply personal way that she might as well have moved through time itself, and we’ve all felt that way about an artist. (But none of us got the chance to share that story in a way to unnerve Lucy Dacus.)
And even more than her own creative inspirations, she came back from the ’70s with one vital lesson for the rest of us (with an otherwise tenuous grasp on the timestream):
“Let’s go outside the mundane and what people know us as,” Monáe said. “Leave room to allow yourself to transform.”
In a day and age where so many people’s identities are being policed and/or erased, Monáe’s little fable seems especially important. We must accept ourselves fully, be willing to embrace the positive power of growth and change, and become who we want to see out in the world.
Unless, of course, she was being literal with her experiences. And at that point, we should all probably continue to idolize Monáe lest we all find ourselves suddenly “un-born” somehow.
Check out the full conversation below (before it’s seized by the MIB, of course).
.@JanelleMonae is a certified time traveler and saw David Bowie on stage. 🛸
“Yeah, I was backstage and I was like ‘this is what I want to do.'” pic.twitter.com/8UKt5bTWiy
— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 20, 2025