4 Cosmic Songs for When You Want to Space Out

My favorite music leaves me with a sense of floating. It’s a different kind of escape where you feel as though you’ve been transported to another place or time. And you can’t think of space and time without, well, space (and Albert Einstein). And if you’re like me, and you enjoy some space-out time, these four cosmic songs might get you there.

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“Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden

Chris Cornell told Uncut in 2017 that he couldn’t explain the meaning of “Black Hole Sun”. He said, “I understand it even less now.” But Soundgarden fans certainly felt something as it became one of the band’s biggest hits. The song appears on Superunknown, a title to further drive home the inexplicable point. But Cornell prays for hope in his grunge ballad. “Heaven send Hell away / No one sings you like you anymore.” There’s also a lyric about honest men being a thing of the past while the snakes persist. Some songs are timeless for good reason.

“Subterranean Homesick Alien” by Radiohead

Perhaps the biggest question surrounding space is whether intelligent life exists elsewhere. What would blow your mind more, that Earth is the only place with advanced lifeforms, or one of many? Thom Yorke imagines aliens observing us from above. Documenting “All these weird creatures / Who lock up their spirits / Drill holes in themselves / And live for their secrets.” Yorke dreams of abduction, for the aliens to show him the world from another perspective. To reveal the meaning of life, because so many here on Earth have forgotten it.

“Blue Moon” by Beck

There is no shortage of moon songs: “Walking On The Moon”, “The Killing Moon”, “Man On The Moon”, and “Harvest Moon”, to name a few. Beck’s “Blue Moon” continues in this tradition. He’d finally gotten around to reading Last Train To Memphis & Careless Love, Peter Guralnick’s two-volume biography of Elvis Presley. Guralnick’s book aims to humanize Presley, one of the world’s first rock stars—an idea that fame implies something cosmic. But Beck sings, “Cut me down to size, so I can fit inside.” Maybe the King of Rock and Roll wanted to feel human again. Normal. Instead of “A vagabond that no one sees.”

“Space Oddity” by David Bowie

Both the Bee Gees and Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired David Bowie to write “Space Oddity”. It marked one of his many reinventions as he abandoned the music hall sound of his debut for psychedelic folk. The release was pushed forward to align with the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon in 1969—making it too perfect to leave off a space playlist. Major Tom gets cut off from ground control. Left to float alone in an ever-expanding abyss. Tom’s lonely plight is sad; the hopefulness of exploration and space flight gets erased by a loss of connection.

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