Australian singles charts:
Space Oddity entered the Kent charts on 26 February 1973 and peaked at #9. The song was #58 on the Top 100 of 1973.
Album:
The song is on Space Oddity which entered the Kent album charts on 12 February 1973 and peaked at #21.
Songwriter:
David Bowie
Producer:
Gus Dudgeon
Record label of Australian release:
RCA Victor
Wikipedia:
Inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), with a title that plays on the film’s title, the song is about the launch into space of Major Tom, a fictional astronaut, and was released during a period of great interest in space flight. The song was originally released in the UK on 11 July 1969 and the United States’ Apollo 11 mission would launch five days later to become the first manned Moon landing. The lyrics have also been seen to lampoon the British space program which was, and still is, an unmanned project.
Read more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Oddity
Songfacts:
In a 2003 interview with Performing Songwriter magazine, Bowie explained: “In England, it was always presumed that it was written about the [Apollo 11 moon landing], because it kind of came to prominence around the same time. But it actually wasn’t. It was written because of going to see the film 2001, which I found amazing. I was out of my gourd anyway, I was very stoned when I went to see it, several times, and it was really a revelation to me. It got the song flowing.
Read more: www.songfacts.com/facts/david-bowie/space-oddity
Rick Wakeman, later of Tubular Bells fame, played a mellotron on Space Oddity.
This song is also on our Spotify playlist Bang a Gong – the 70s
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