Space OddityDavid Bowie
Space Oddity
1969 · From David Bowie (Space Oddity)
Released five days before Apollo 11 launched, with a children's Stylophone buzzing under an astronaut who never comes home.
★ 8.2
Released five days before Apollo 11 launched, with a children's Stylophone buzzing under an astronaut who never comes home.

Taupin borrowed the title from a Pearls Before Swine song, and Hentschel's ARP put the loneliness in orbit.
Piano and Bill Peterson's flugelhorn, cut at Young's Topanga home studio, written for a Dean Stockwell screenplay.

One synth riff, written years earlier on a Korg Polysix borrowed from Michaeli, went to number one in twenty-five countries.
Mothership Connection opens as a pirate broadcast from space, with Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley newly defected from James Brown.

A piano ballad at first, then a synthesizer break, then guitars, angels and a starship headed skyward.