Planet Earth is blue, and there's nothing I can do...

Original Released as "DAVID BOWIE"

on LP Philips SBL 7912 (UK 1969, November 4)

The US edition appeared in early January 1970 on LP Mercury 61246 and with the title "Man Of Words Man Of Music" (new cover above). Three years later, in November 72, the album was re-issued in the States as "Space Oddity" (RCA AQL 4813, with another different cover and without the theme "Don't Sit Down").

Prior to the album a single was edited in July 1969: "Space Oddity / The Wild Eyed Boy From Freecloud" (Philips BF 1801). I brought this single home from the store one day and waited patiently for the solitude of night to unlock its secrets. I can still remember pressing my ear against the speaker and drinking the song’s strange magic in like some extraterrestrial oxygen, amazed that the artist had once again cleared the impossibly high expectations I held for him. The lyrics were about Major Tom leaving the Earth. But in that same month, on the 20th, another man, named Neil Armstrong, was in reality the first human to walk on the moon (I saw the direct transmission in the company of my father, all night long).

"Space Oddity" was the first record on which David Bowie looked and sounded like the Bowie whom the world has come to know. One glance at the spooky, androgynous face that adorns the record was enough to signal that the Anthony Newley-influenced, light-pop singer who sang the novelty number "The Laughing Gnome" a few years earlier was a thing of the past. Leaving behind the mannered, English music hall-isms of his initial recordings, Bowie roughened up the sound, creating a ragged, eclectic mix of folk and rock tinged with electronic sounds. The record yielded his first American hit, and began the singer's soon-to-be meteoric rise to international rock icon-hood.The title track, a sci-fi mini-epic, is an enduring classic in which Bowie squeezes every bit of drama from both his dour low range and the soaring upper reaches of his voice. Even after decades of continued airplay, "Space Oddity" is surprising for its intricate arrangement, nifty guitar playing, and palpable sense of interplanetary estrangement. Other fine and lesser-known musical moments include the sublimely subdued "Letter to Hermione", and the sprawling and strange "Memory of a Free Festival".