The Song That Reached the Moon — But Took Six Years to Reach No. 1
The Song That Reached the Moon — But Took Six Years to Reach No. 1
London, 1969.
David Bowie was still trying to find his place.
He had released music before.
He had performed.
He had experimented.
But he was nowhere near the global superstar he would become.
Then came a strange song about a man floating alone in space.
His name was Major Tom.
And the song was called Space Oddity.
Bowie had actually written and demoed the song months earlier, in November 1968. Early versions were much more intimate, including recordings made with guitarist John “Hutch” Hutchinson.
But Bowie knew there was something unusual about it.
The inspiration partly came from Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Bowie had been fascinated by the film and by the strange psychological experience of watching a human being become isolated in space.
But he didn't simply write a song about astronauts.
He created a character.
Major Tom.
At the beginning, everything seems under control.
Ground control is communicating with him.
The launch is successful.
He is leaving Earth.
And then something changes.
Major Tom drifts farther away.
Communication begins to fail.
Eventually, he is completely alone.
That made the song much more than a futuristic novelty.
It was about isolation.
Distance.
And what happens when someone becomes separated from the world they once knew.
Bowie first recorded the song for the film project Love You Till Tuesday. On February 2, 1969, he entered Morgan Studios in London to record the soundtrack version, and just four days later the song was filmed for the proposed television special. Bowie later described the song as one of the important early landmarks of his career.
Then came the timing.
The single was released on 11 July 1969.
Five days later, Apollo 11 launched toward the Moon.
Suddenly, Bowie's fictional astronaut was arriving at exactly the moment the entire world was watching real astronauts prepare to leave Earth.
The connection was almost too perfect.
Television stations embraced the song.
The public heard Bowie's voice alongside images of rockets, astronauts and the Moon.
And Space Oddity began climbing the British charts.
But there was an important irony.
The song didn't immediately become the gigantic No. 1 that people might assume today.
Its original UK chart run peaked at No. 5.
That was a major breakthrough for Bowie.
But it wasn't yet the legendary status the song would eventually achieve.
In America, its initial impact was even more modest.
Bowie was still waiting for his moment.
And then history gave him another chance.
In 1975, Space Oddity was re-released in Britain.
This time, the song finally reached No. 1.
The song that had introduced Major Tom to the world six years earlier had finally become the chart-topping classic people remembered it as.
But there is another reason the original recording feels so distinctive.
Listen closely to the instrumentation.
Alongside the acoustic guitar and orchestra are the strange electronic sounds of Bowie's Stylophone.
That little electronic instrument helped give the recording its futuristic atmosphere.
And Bowie wasn't simply singing over a backing track.
He was helping create an entirely new sonic world.
There is something almost cinematic about the arrangement.
The countdown.
The launch.
The sense of weightlessness.
Then the loneliness.
The music itself seems to drift farther away as Major Tom does.
And perhaps that is why the song has lasted.
Because beneath the science fiction is something deeply human.
Major Tom is millions of miles from home.
But loneliness doesn't require space travel.
You can feel completely disconnected while standing in a crowded room.
That was one of the reasons Bowie could keep returning to the character.
Major Tom later reappeared in Bowie's work, including “Ashes to Ashes.” The character became a recurring symbol in his artistic universe.
And then, decades later, the song received perhaps the strangest performance in its history.
In 2013, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded himself performing Space Oddity aboard the International Space Station.
It became the first music video filmed in space.
The fictional Major Tom had finally been followed into orbit by a real astronaut.
Think about how extraordinary that journey was.
A young David Bowie writes a strange song inspired partly by a science-fiction film.
He records it before becoming famous.
It is released just before humanity's first Moon landing.
The song becomes associated with Apollo 11.
It reaches No. 5.
Then disappears from the top of the charts.
Six years later, it returns and reaches No. 1.
And decades after Bowie wrote it, a real astronaut performs it in space.
Few songs have travelled such a strange distance.
The fictional astronaut went up.
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Bowie went up.
And eventually, the song itself went up with them.
