"
Space Oddity" is a song written and performed by David Bowie and released as a single in 1969. It is about the launch of Major Tom, a fictional astronaut who becomes lost in Outer Space. Supposedly released 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.
"Space Oddity" is a powerful narrative, echoing Arthur C. Clarke's book, and Stanley Kubrick's movie,
2001: A Space Odyssey, both released in 1968. The similarity in titles suggests that this film was on Bowie's mind when he wrote it. The main character in that novel (and in the movie) is called "David Bowman".
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 (She knows!)", suggests that he is still alive and well and chooses 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". Drug users, specifically those who experiment with hallucinogens, find the song took on new meaning following Bowie's battle with drugs in the 1970s. In "Ashes to Ashes", Major Tom's communication failure could be reinterpreted as losing human contact due to drugs.
Space Oddity is often interpreted as "a bad trip". At the start of the song Major Tom takes pills ("take your protein pills and put your helmet on"), those pills have their effect ("and I'm floating in a most peculiar way / and the stars look very different today") but eventually Major Tom fails to come out of his trip.
In an interview on
VH1 Legends in 1997, the narrator and Bowie himself stated that the inspiration was his relationship with Hermione Farthingale, a woman for whom Bowie had deep feelings.
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 "Rocket Man" seems to allude to Major Tom, though not by name. It tells of an unnamed astronaut who is lonely in space, who is "not the man they think I am at home". Bowie alludes to this analogy in a live performance of "Space Oddity" released on the
David Bowie BBC Sessions 1969-1972, in which he sings, "I'm just a rocketman!" In 1983, the German pop singer Peter Schilling released his own take on the story, entitled "Major Tom", although he denied for several years after the song's release that his Tom was the same as Bowie's, and even went so far as to claim he had never even heard
Space Oddity.
Bowie himself returned to the subject on 1995's
Outside album with the song "Hallo Spaceboy", and a hit single remixed by The Pet Shop Boys even included disjointed lyrics from the original "Space Oddity".
Source:
Wikipedia