Flight of the Conchord’s “Bowie’s In Space” (2007)

This should be funnier than it actually is. I never saw the show, Flight of the Conchords, but apparently an episode in 2007 had something to do with David Bowie. Part of the episode was the eponymous band performing this song, which parodies Bowie’s voice, some of his lyrics as well as some of his looks. Specifically, most of this video seems to be making fun of Bowie’s somewhat obscure 1969 “Space Oddity” video, which was really part of the even less well known film, Love You Til Tuesday. An eyepatch wearing Halloween Jack type also appears in the video, and from what I can gather, other versions of Bowie appear in the episode as a whole.

OK, it’s all amusing. I think what’s supposed to hold the humor together is the singer’s Bowie impersonation. I don’t find any of this offensive or insulting, but I also didn’t chuckle at any point.

Also, the gag plays on a very common misperception about Bowie’s use of space as a topic in his music. Yes, two songs on Space Oddity (1969), including the title track have something to do with space. And of course the premise of Ziggy Stardust (1972) is that he’s a space alien and several songs from the album at least make indirect references to space. But Bowie largely avoids the topic again until “Ashes to Ashes” (1980) and then again largely steers clear until “Hallo Spaceboy” (1995) After that, Bowie comes back to the topic much more frequently, but the Bowie of the 90s and 2000s is not what this video is joking about.

OK, a few caveats: “Life on Mars” (1971) and “Loving the Alien” (1984) are not about space. I do suspect that Bowie was conscious of using the word, “Alien” in the latter song, deliberately trying to evoke a all-is-not-what-it-seems vibe for listeners who, by 1984, had come to associate Bowie with space and aliens. Also, yes, “TVC15” (1976) arguably makes an allusion to space with the line, “My baby’s in there someplace, love’s rating in the sky,” but you have to get conceptual to think of “TVC15” as being a space song. Also, the refrain of Tin Machine’s “Heaven’s in Here” (1989) asserts that “Heaven’s in here, amidst the twilight and stars, like a rocket to Mars.” But first, it’s still not a space song. Second, Bowie was really trying to be iconoclastic with Tin Machine, not cementing his own stereotype. Third, even if you want to count “Heaven’s in Here,” it still came nearly a decade after “Ashes to Ashes,” and “Ashes to Ashes” really drives home the point that space is being used as a metaphor for a drugged state, even in “Space Oddity.”

It’s all well and good to poke fun at Bowie about space. Elton John might have started the trend with, “Bennie and the Jets” (1973), about a Bowie-inspired band that’s “so spaced out.” Bowie himself surely got in on the act starting in the mid-90s with “Hallo Spaceboy.” Most of his subsequent albums either make some reference to space or evoke imagery that related to space. By this time and through the end, Bowie had become reflective, self-referential and also happy to show that he was in on the joke.