Happy 'Boxing Day'! 16 Boxed Sets for the Music Fan on Your Holiday List

This set may go a long way toward channeling any grief you might still be harboring about the loss of one of rock's greatest figures at the beginning of the year. Following an equally outstanding boxed set from 2015 that captured the Ziggy years, this second edition in the series chronicles his unlikely transition to soulman, then mystery man, as the glam of Diamond Dogs gives way to the R&B of Young Americans, which gives way to the spookier Station to Station. Those are the three core studio albums included, but with the set stretching to 12 discs in total, that's obviously just part of a package that includes two live albums and assorted remasters and remixes. The gem of this box is the first official assemblage of The Gouster, an early version of the Young Americans project Bowie was planning to release before he scrapped and replaced about half of the material. The nixed songs have come out as bonus tracks over the subsequent decades, so some fans have already created their own Gousters, but having the aborted album in an official package helps cement what we'd already suspected: that, by sticking more faithfully to the core R&B sound, it's an even better album than the one he did put out. YMMV on that, but it's going to be a lot more fun to debate the merits of Young Americans versus The Gouster over Christmas dinner than rearguing Donald versus Hillary.