Ballads of the Sad Spacemen
The three great rock songs of the space age
This Guardian article Tin can alley: the return of the Sad Man in Space reflects on how many recent movies fit that category. Examples include Adam Sandler’s new Netflix movie Spaceman, Ryan Gosling in First Man, and Brad Pitt in Ad Astra.
It made me think of the three great spaceman songs from about 1970. Come to think of it, those astronauts were all sad too. Let’s remember them together.
David Bowie’s very first big hit was his Space Oddity in 1969. “Ground control to Major Tom…” Sure, the song’s name is dumb and infantile, but the song is so great, we forgive the title. (Didn’t something else space-related happen in 1969? Oh yeah, first man on the moon.)
Bowie was hit-making machine in the 1970s and 1980s, but Space Oddity remains his biggest hit.
Major Tom was sad because his missed his wife. Also because he lost contact with ground control. His corpse is probably still in (or around) its tin can, one hundred thousand miles out, wandering through space even today. Bummer.
Elton John (with his lyricist Bernie Taupin) was also a hit making machine in the 1970s and 1980s. One of those hits was Rocket Man in 1972. Its official title is Rocket Man (I Think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long time) so there’s your memorable lyric.
This rocket man was sad because he missed his wife.
And because he’s got a bit of imposter syndrome. (“I’m not the man they think I am at home.”)
And because he’s “burning out his fuse up here alone”. (Did you know that was the lyric? I never did until I looked it up just now. I always sang, “Rocket Man, burning up the neon blah blah blah.”)
A fine song, except for one dumb verse: “Mars ain’t the kind of place to raise a kid, in fact it’s cold as hell. And there’s no one to raise them, if you did.” But Elton sings it really nicely.
The third song rounding out the trio is 1972’s Spaceman by Harry Nilsson. Nilsson had a handful of hits in the 1970s, but nothing like the catalogs of Bowie and Elton. Nilson is mostly known for:
- His pure and versatile singing voice with an incredible vocal range.
- His song Everybody’s Talkin’ at Me for the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy. (The first and only movie with an X rating to win the Best Picture Oscar.) The song won a Grammy for Best Male Contemporary Vocal Performance but it wasn’t up for an Oscar.
- On your favorite Classic Rock station, you may still occasionally hear Nilsson’s weird but charming radio hit, “He put the lime in the coconut, shake it all up…”. In case you’re wondering, the actual title is simply Coconut.
- He caroused with John Lennon around Hollywood during Lennon’s famous “Lost Weekend” (18 months in 1973–1975). I never heard that Nilsson was as big of an asshole as Lennon was during that period.
Spaceman was a big hit and is also quite weird but charming. It has a decent, no-frills title and no particularly dumb lyrics. Except that the whole song is dumb, and deliberately so. (Same for Lime in the Coconut.) Gotta love it.
Nilsson’s spaceman is sad because “I wanted to be a spaceman, that’s what I wanted to be. But now that I am a spaceman, nobody cares about me.” He goes around and around and around and around and around, and wails, “Bring me back down!”
I always thought it was odd that these three classic spaceman songs came out almost simultaneously, though I guess Bowie beat the others to the punch by a few years. (Didn’t he always?) Were there any other great spaceman rock songs before or after these three? Maybe Steve Miller’s Space Cowboy? But he wasn’t actually an astronaut. And he wasn’t sad.
