Music Video #46 (Day 16 of 2008)

Today's video is out of this world! Yeah, I'm unimaginitive. It's Space Oddity by four time champ David Bowie. And guess what, we get five minutes of him.


My first reaction to watching this video was wondering "this was made in the 60s? I would have guessed early 80s." I know that this was around the time the counter-culture got big but David's look still seems out of place for the decade, no matter how late it was.

We start with a close up with one of those wavelength machines. I forget what they're called, but they're only used for physics class to try to teach about wavelengths. Or so I recall. I think it was called the glowing slinky machine.

We see Bowie and he has orange died hair and a feminine look. That's why I thought it was made in the eighties because that period had a brief androgynous fad. We get a look at his face and I have to clarify what I said. When I say feminine, I mean he's wearing makeup, because he'd otherwise be a very ugly looking transvestite. Moving along, David plays a guitar while singing generic space shuttle program phrases. In this case, it's "Ground control to Major Tom." Major Tom is told to get ready for liftoff. Then Major Tom is informed that the count down is about to start and he's wished good luck.

We see a switchboard and David sings through a countdown. I bet that people lost interest in the space program after they got tired of countless countdowns seen in movies. David poins to the sky to dramatically make his poin.

David reaches a higher octave when he sings about how Major Tom is already a hero. Product placements are already guaranteed. (Did that happen in real life? I'm curious now about what Buzz Aldrin put his name on, or if Armstrong did a commercial where he said "one small step.") Major Tom is told that he's about to take the first exciting step outside the capsule.

Major Tom finally gets something to say. He talks about what's it like to float around in space while the camera tries to simulate it. Space is like a wobbly web cam. The major notes how the stars look different and so does the earth. I would hope so giving how much taxpayer money went into this project! Could you imagine going into space and saying "Oh, just what I thought. This isn't a big deal."?

Then the video takes a strange and unnecessary turn. Major Tom starts to talk about how the spaceship know were to go. His last words to ground control is that he loves his wife. Ground control frantically tries to get Major Tom to respond, but David's body language says that this doesn't happen.

The song ends with Major Tom once again notices how he's alone in a space capsule not able to do anything. Why did this have to turn into Apollo 13? That hadn't even happened yet. Couldn't they have been all introspective without the tragedy?


I liked this song up to the ending. It's a nice song especially since it came out right after the first moon landing. Bowie still looks weird.

The awesome thing about this video is what I just noted. This song came out just around at the time where several more missions would send a shuttle to the moon. Bowie was at the right place at the right time and gave a memorable song.