![]() “Space Oddity” has come to define Bowie, perhaps because it’s as protean as its creator has tried to be. “Space Oddity” is close company to early Bee Gees hits like “ New York Mining Disaster 1941” and Zager and Evans’ dire “In the Year 2525”: it’s a gimmicky folk song dressed up in extravagant clothes. It began as a novelty song with a sell-by date (the first moon landing in July 1969), something like a grandiose, more dignified “ Laughing Gnome,” and Tony Visconti, for one, refused to have anything to do with it, considering the song a cynical sell-out. So it’s “classic” Bowie, its now-iconic status won slowly and circuitously, but then “Space Oddity” has always seemed slightly out of time (its biggest chart placings, both in the US and the UK, came years after its first release). ![]() When Bowie dies, the TV tributes will lead off with it. “Space Oddity” is an officially sanctioned beginning: Bowie’s first single for Philips/Mercury his first Top 10 hit (and, years later, his first UK #1) lead-off and title track of the subsequent LP lead-off track of every greatest hits compilation from ChangesOneBowie on lead-off track on his Sound and Vision career retrospective. Space Oddity (“1980 Floor Show” rehearsal, 1973). Space Oddity (first live TV performance, 1970). Space Oddity (Bowie and Hutchinson demo). ![]()
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