Space Oddity

"Space Oddity" was David Bowie's first hit single. It is about the launch of Major Tom, a fictional astronaut who mysteriously becomes lost in Outer Space. Released in 1969 to coincide with the Apollo 11 moon landing, it appears on the album of the same title The BBC featured the song in its television coverage of the lunar landing.

The song is often interpreted to be about self-destruction and estrangement from humanity. Major Tom's cryptic last message, "Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles / I'm feeling very still / And I think my spaceship knows which way to go / Tell my wife I love her very much," suggests that he is still alive and well and choses to kill his circuit to ground control.

Bowie seems to confirm this interpretation with his 1980 follow up to "Space Oddity", "Ashes to Ashes", where Ground control eventually receives a message from Major Tom: "I'm happy, hope you're happy too". The people back on Earth, however, think that he is a "junkie, strung out in heaven's high," but hittting "an all-time low." The song comes after Bowie's battle with drugs in the 1970s. In account of "Ashes to Ashes", Major Tom's communication failure could be reinterpreted as losing human contact due to drugs.

The song is also a powerful narrative, echoing Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968. The similarity in titles may suggest that film was on Bowie's mind when he wrote it.

This narrative continues in rock music throughout the late 20th Century, both in Bowie's own work and that of others. As well as the aforementioned "Ashes to Ashes", Elton John's "Rocketman" seems to allude to Major Tom, though not by name. It tells of an unnamed astronaut who is lonely in space, who's "not the man they think I am at home". Bowie alludes to this analogy a live performance of "Space Oddity" released on the David Bowie BBC Sessions 1969-1972, in which he sings, "Oh Rocketman!" In 1983, the German pop singer Peter Schilling released his own take on the story, entitled "Major Tom."

In the 2002 movie Mr. Deeds, Adam Sandler performed "Space Oddity".