100 Greatest Songs of the 60’s #46 David Bowie – Space Oddity

Released: 1969

Sometimes you just have to take your hat off and leave somebody else to get on with it. Writing in the Melody Maker at the time of Space Oddity’s release, writer Chris Welch decided to approach things from a slightly oblique angle. ‘David is a talented young man who has written many fine songs and now concentrates on mime shows’ he informed the readers, before continuing with ‘He once produced an interesting album, which I lost at a party in Earls Court and have never seen since.’

Such are the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Perhaps Welch, like the rest of music journalism’s then highly influential fourth estate found Bowie to be an enigma to which there seemed to be no obvious solution; the singer’s career had seemed creatively at least to stall following the release of his self titled debut album, and on tour with T.Rex he had indeed been third on the bill doing his best Marcel Marceau.

Space Oddity’s sentiment came from a very human breakup the singer had experienced, but it’s vision of the orbiting Major Tom and his detachment from his missions both professional and human was bleak and futuristic. The song itself was a complex splicing of different instrumental moving parts, it’s restlessness in contrast with the subject’s thousand light year stare. Welch deemed that it would be a hit – by no means certain at the time – and so it was, before redeeming himself several times over in the future, making Bowie the subject of several of his books. Major Tom didn’t know it, but he would also make return later too.