David Bowie had a lot of personas over the years, as well as famous characters in his music. The most recognizable might be Major Tom, who debuted in 1969. This character would go on to be referenced in three other songs, with his story finally concluding in the 2016 album Blackstar. Here are all the songs that feature Major Tom.
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“Space Oddity”
The character Major Tom originated with “Space Oddity” released in 1969. The song itself was influenced by Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey. In a 2011 biography, Bowie stated, “I went stoned out of my mind to see the movie and it really freaked me out, especially the trip passage.”
Additionally, the Apollo 8 Earthrise photograph, as well as the loneliness and isolation that came after a breakup, inspired the song. The story of Major Tom begins as his spacecraft malfunctions. Ground Control tries to tell him something is wrong, but he doesn’t hear the warning. Instead, he floats on in his “tin can” awaiting a lonely death.
“At the end of the song Major Tom is completely emotionless and expresses no view at all about where he’s at,” Bowie once said, as quoted in a 2016 biography. “He’s fragmenting … at the end of the song his mind is completely blown – he’s everything then.”
“Ashes To Ashes”
“Ashes To Ashes” serves as the sequel to “Space Oddity”, subtly adding more to Major Tom’s story. It featured on the 1980 album Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps).
In “Ashes To Ashes”, Major Tom has succumbed to drug addiction, playing off of David Bowie’s own experiences with drugs. The astronaut floats aimlessly in space, strung out and isolated. Ground Control receives a message from him, telling them he’s “Strung out in heaven’s high / hitting an all-time low.”
Major Tom reflects on his life in space, his actions, and downfalls. He wishes to be released from his “caged psyche,” expressing hope for the future, but everyone ignores his pleas. “We come to him 10 years later and find the whole thing has soured, because there was no reason for putting him up there,” Bowie once explained, quoted in the 2019 book The Songs Of David Bowie.
“Hallo Spaceboy”
This song featured on the 1995 album Outside. The original composition doesn’t directly reference Major Tom by name, but in a remix with The Pet Shop Boys, they added a bit that explores more of Major Tom’s fate.
Originally, “Hallo Spaceboy” was an angry, industrial metal type song. But the remix turned it from a weathered cry against chaos into a cry for help from an isolated astronaut. The Pet Shop Boys remixed lyrics from “Space Oddity”, adding an extra verse and their typical electronic sound.
The duo added the lyrics “Ground to Major, bye bye Tom / dead the circuit, countdown’s wrong / Planet Earth is control on?” Neil Tennant of Pet Shop Boys explained the addition as a completion of the Major Tom trilogy.
“I said to [Bowie], ‘It’s like Major Tom is in one of those Russian spaceships they can’t afford to bring down,’” Tennant told NME in 2017, “And he said, ‘Oh wow, is that where he is?’”
“Blackstar”
This conclusion to Major Tom’s story comes in the form of the “Blackstar” music video as opposed to lyrics. The song served as the title track to David Bowie’s final album, released in 2016, two days before his death.
In the music video, there’s a scene of a dead astronaut. An alien woman retrieves his jeweled skull and takes it back to her colony, where they worship it with cult-like adoration. In a sense, this could represent Major Tom’s fate, closing the book on what happened to him after years of isolation and addiction.
For the video’s director, Johan Renck, this was obvious. “To me, it was 100% Major Tom,” he said in a 2017 BBC documentary.
Photo by Ed Perlstein/Redferns/Getty Images
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