“Space Oddity,” David Bowie’s ode to the loneliness of space, framed as a conversation between ‘Major Tom and Ground Control’, was released in July 1969, nine days before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Bowie didn’t draw inspiration from the moon landing but rather from Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” However, the song was rushed through the production process to capitalize on the American moon shot.

While watching the movie in the theater in 1968, Bowie related to Classic Rock in 2012 that, “It was the sense of isolation I related to. I found the whole thing amazing. I was out of my gourd, very stoned when I went to see it – several times – and it was really a revelation to me. It got the song flowing.”

The song reached #5 on the charts in the UK but only made a slight blip in the US, peaking at #124 on the Billboard Hot 100. As Bowie’s fame increased in the next couple of years, RCA re-released the 1969 album and the song as a single, leading it to rise to #15 in the US on the Billboard Hot 100.

The attached video is Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield’s rendition of the song that he recorded aboard the International Space Station in 2013. With permission from Bowie, he updated the lyrics slightly to reflect current circumstances. The song was the first music video made in space and the first use of an acoustic guitar in space.

Trivia:

• During the launch of Musk’s Falcon Heavy, with a Tesla Roadster aboard, the car’s sound system was said to be looping the Bowie songs “Space Oddity” and “Life on Mars?”
• Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey drew inspiration from Arthur C. Clarke’s novel of the same name, but also from Clarke’s earlier short stories, particularly “The Sentinel” and “Encounter in the Dawn,” both published in the early 1950s.

Source: David Bowie.com. Where is Telsa Roadster.space. Graphic: Space Oddity by Chris Hadfield, 2013.