Space Oddity

Very smart clean vinyl with a nice crisp cover.

Space Oddity" is a song written and performed by David Bowie and released as a music single in July 1969, just nine days before Apollo 11 landed on the moon. It was also the opening track of the album David Bowie (also known as Space Oddity). The song is about the launch of Major Tom, a fictional astronaut. Besides its title, which alludes to the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, the introduction to the song is a barely audible instrumental build-up that is analogous to the deep bass tone in Also sprach Zarathustra that is prominently used in the film. The lyrics have also been seen to lampoon the British space programme.^[1]

The song was awarded the 1969 Ivor Novello Award, together with Peter Sarstedt's "Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)?". It was Bowie's first UK Top 5 hit. "Space Oddity" became so well known that Bowie's second album, originally released as David Bowie in the UK (like his first album), was renamed after the track for its 1972 reissue by RCA Records, and became known by this name. Upon rerelease in 1975, the song was Bowie's first UK No. 1 single.

Bowie would later revisit his Major Tom character in the songs "Ashes to Ashes" and "Hallo Spaceboy". German singer Peter Schilling's 1983 hit "Major Tom (Coming Home)" is written as a retelling of the song. In 2013, the song gained renewed popularity after it was covered by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, who performed the song while aboard the International Space Station, and therefore became the first music video shot in space. This video was removed from YouTube on May 13, 2014: despite Bowie's explicit wishes that Hadfield be fully licensed to record the song and produce the video, the song is owned — and its copyright controlled — by Bowie's publisher, who granted Hadfield license to the song for only one year.^[2] As of 2 November 2014 the video has been reinstated, this time for a 2-year period.^[3]