Key facts
- B side
- Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud
- Released
- 11 July 1969 ( 1969-07-11 )
- Recorded
- 20 June 1969
- Studio
- Trident , London
- Genre
- Psychedelic folk folk rock space rock
- Length
- 5 : 15 (album version) 4 : 33 (UK single edit) 3 : 26 (US single edit)
- Label
- Philips (1969 UK release) Mercury (1969 US release) RCA (1972 US reissue & 1975 UK reissue)
- Songwriter
- David Bowie
- Producer
- Gus Dudgeon
via Wikipedia infobox
~39 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Music video "Space Oddity" on YouTube
"Space Oddity" is a song by the English singer-songwriter David Bowie. It was first released on 11 July 1969 by Philips and Mercury Records as a 7-inch single, then as the opening track of his second studio album, David Bowie. Produced by Gus Dudgeon and recorded at Trident Studios in London, it is a tale about a fictional astronaut named Major Tom; its title and subject matter were partly inspired by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Bowie's feelings of alienation at that point in his career. Its sound departed from the music hall of his debut album to psychedelic folk inspired by the Bee Gees; it was one of the most musically complex compositions he had written up to that point.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Space Oddity” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.