David Bowie: Space Oddity (1969)

Space Oddity (1969) is actually titled David Bowie, much like his first album. This is interesting because it goes to show the degree to which that first album from last week was relatively unheard. The first track, "Space Oddity" takes the title because it is without a doubt the standout track on the album. Even I had heard the song before even knowing that David Bowie was the mind behind it.

Beyond that this album features so much more jamming than the previous album did. Songs often last a minute longer than their run time, and Bowie isn't afraid to drop his lyrics and voice out to let the music carry the song.

So we will once again go track by track to examine not only the obvious masterpiece, but the evolution of Bowie's sound. Here the Beatles have fallen away and something more rock and folk has taken root.



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1. Space Oddity

Favorite Lyrics: "Can you hear me Major Tom? Can you heeeere I am floating round my tin can"

The masterpiece track of the album and probably an easy top track in Bowie's entire discography (we'll see about that though). This story of an astronaut going to space is enrapturing not just because of the lyrics and delivery, but because of the ambiguously concerning music. The straining sound before the first chorus breaks in give off that feeling of unease. It's hotly debated about what Major Tom is experiencing in the song. Is it death? Is it drugs? There's good arguments for both. But really, what would the difference be? It's about being disembodied in some form or another.

2. Unwashed and Somewhat Slightly Dazed / Don't Sit Down

Favorite Lyrics: "So you could spend the morning walking with me quite amazed,"

The sad little guitar riff from the beginning evolves into one of the most jam worthy Bowie songs we've heard so far. This is an easy second favorite on this album and its purely that progressive rock sound that his guitar, the harmonica, and the lyrical delivery go through. I can't imagine this type of sound was crazy hard to find back in the day, but Bowie's take on it is as dirty as the songs own title.

The whole Don't Sit Down add-on at the end of this song feels like it's just one of those raw little sound bites. It seems like it evolves from the jam that the band goes on at the end of the song. Not much else to mention.

3. Letter to Hermione

Favorite Lyrics: "I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to do / So I'll just write some love to you."

I don't know. This song each time I've listened to it, while it has a nice guitar rift, it just seems like it belongs with the "Buy me a Coat" songs from the first album. Bowie apparently wrote this to an old girlfriend, and while I can relate to the feeling, there's something these lyrics just don't get beyond that impetus. Specificity is an important aspect of good writing, and this just feels like a lot of other love songs then and since.

4. Cygnet Committee

Favorite Lyrics: "I love you badly, just in time, at times, I guess"

This nine minute epic features a great deal of emotion and change. Six-hundred and forty words long, this epic seems to take a strange perspective. Cygnet is the word for a young swan, and we could argue that Bowie is writing of some sort of spiritual / political coming of age. Indeed, the latter minutes of the song begin to attack the concepts held up in the name of religious institutions. "God was just a word."

5. Janine

Favorite Lyrics: "You'd like to know me well / But I've got things inside my head that even I can't face."

Janine reminds of the later music of Queens of the Stone Age a bit. It's not just the errant background guitars, or the half pronounced sound of some of the lyrics. The lyrics contain the content of a woman attempting to know David's character in a way that character can't accomodate. Why? For whatever reason.

6. An Occasional Dream

Favorite Lyrics: "Time takes time to pass,"

This track is about those days of wasting away in circumstance. It's sweet sound is yet another instance of tonal dissonance. These lyrics are not as sweet as the flutes would have you think. I don't know that there's really too much to grip from them. This is another break-up song as revealed in the last stanza of lyrics.

7. Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud

Favorite Lyrics: "It's really me, really you, really me, so hard for us to really be."

This story of the hanging of a bright-eyed person is a good metaphor for the death of the world. There's a great grand sound to this song with the bandstand sound we heard on the last album. Every instance where those instruments come back on this album show a greater depth and composition. Bowie especially sings with a great volume. The running violins as they ditter happily lifts the soul. This would've been a great song to hear live, when you could feel the music, the horns. The happiness of the song drains slowly as the boy is executed.

8. God Knows I'm Good

Favorite Lyrics: "God knows I'm good / God knows I'm good / God knows I'm good."

This track about a woman stealing food contains so much soulful conflict. I'm a sucker for songs about people suffering under the visage / illusion / lack of / knowledge of God. These songs are a quick easy way towards meaningful existentialism. I especially love the way she thinks "God may look the other way today," so that maybe she won't be seen sinning. "Surely God won't look the other way," is a change to asking God to look after her as she's about to be, or being caught. It's a good transition and more than the folksy little guitar lets on.

9. Memory of a Free Festival

Favorite Lyrics: "Oh to capture just one drop of all that ecstasy that swept that afternoon,"

The song starts with a real lackadaisical sounding set of horns and piano plays. It does have a festive sound, but it's mournful and slow. In a rather typical move, Bowie's backing music is tonally dissonant from the lyrics. This is a rather joyful sound. Unlike most songs it does finally climb its way up to celebrate this happiness. It does this through a similar sounding cacophony of mixed and misplaced sounds (Queens is echoing in my brain again). Bowie's voice pierces out of this and is eventually the thing that gives a guidance and structure to this noise. And it's this chorus line that plays us out.

More drugs? Who can say.
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Hey guys thanks for joining me on Bowie's second album. Two down. Twenty-five to go. Join me next week for The Man Who Sold the World.

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