Five Bowie songs that are NOT about space (but the uninitiated might think they are)
OK, I meant to post another of my 2024 in review pieces, but I didn’t finish writing it in time. Instead, I’m posting this one, which I’ve had in my back pocket (and indeed might have more general interest). It is meant to be humorous, and yeas, I know I’m going to get heat for #5, but just listen to the song’s actual lyrics…
—
Bowie is known for his association with space, astronauts and aliens, but it’s only a small percentage of his songs that touch on those topics. That said, Bowie was aware of his reputation and liked to occasionally have a little fun with misdirection. Here are five songs that aren’t what the casual listener might assume they are about:
1. “Life on Mars?” (1971) This, one of Bowie’s most beloved songs, is not actually about life on Mars at all. Rather it’s about a girl “with mousey hair” who goes to the movies to escape the drudgeries of her day-to-day life. Bowie asks, “is there life on Mars?” while evoking the type of themes that might be addressed in movies, along with cavemen and a lawman beating up the wrong guy.
2. “Loving the Alien” (1984). “Loving the Alien” is not about space aliens at all but rather Bowie uses the word “alien” in the sense of something foreign or other, exploring the clash of faiths, the persistence of religious conflict, and the tension between belief and truth across history and modern times. Of all these songs, Bowie was probably having the most fun with wordplay on this one (though I’ve heard a story where he angrily castigated a fan for thinking the song was about space aliens).
3. “Like a Rocket Man” (2013). This relatively obscure 2013 song is not about a rocket man or astronaut, but rather about cocaine addiction. Bowie was obviously aware that he was using the name of Elton John’s song, which has often been thought of as having been influenced by “Space Oddity,” but as any of us who saw the movie Rocketman knows, Elton was, like Bowie, a cocaine addict (though, to be clear, I don’t think this song is about Elton John’s addiction per se).
4. “Shining Star (Makin’ my Love)” (1987). “Star” is one of Bowie’s most conspicuously used words, but in this case, it was purely metaphorical. Bowie was, perhaps, even trickier in titling a song on The Rise and fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, “Star,” which itself used the term to mean celebrity rather than a celestial body. I’m using this one as the representative sample of Bowie’s metaphorical use of “star” because anyone making their way through Never Let Me Down hoping for Bowie to return to his old subject matter will have to get past this one.
5. “Ziggy Stardust” (1972). I’m ending the list with a debatable entry. Here’s my point– look at the lyrics of this song and consider them outside the context of the rest of the album. At no point does the song establish Ziggy to be a space alien, nor is there any other mention of space. Even the word, “Stardust,” which I’d argue is simply the character’s last name anyway, doesn’t appear in the body of the song. So no, “Ziggy Stardust” is not about an alien.
###