Ranking David Bowie’s ‘Major Tom’ songs
An idle spaceman sits in his spaceship, floating in zero gravity as it orbits the Earth. This is Major Tom, David Bowie’s first character, and one of the biggest concepts ever created in music.
Major Tom was a lot of people’s initial introduction to Bowie. They were previously unaware of the Brixton boy’s musical stylings. Their first time listening to him came in the form of this character, a depressed astronaut, who had to go all the way to space to discover that his problems on Earth might actually be a little insignificant. It’s a melancholic story, but one that established Bowie as an exciting concept artist for the masses.
Since creating Major Tom, Bowie has played around with a number of different characters, such as Ziggy Stardust and Aladdin Sane. All of these characters he has formally brought to a close, as he was always looking for the next thing to move onto. The only exception to this rule was Major Tom, whom he never formally stopped being, as he instead just littered his career with occasional references to him in unsuspecting songs.
His inability to officially kill off the character, paired with the random occurrences of when he’d turn up, led fans to believe that Major Tom was the character which closest resembled Bowie himself. The songs in which he creeps up feel deeply personal, and all are great to listen to, but it begs the question: which is best? Here, we will rank the Major Tom-centric songs that Bowie released in order from worst to best.
Ranking David Bowie’s ‘Major Tom’ songs from worst to best:
‘Hallo Spaceboy’
Whether or not this is actually a song about Major Tom is difficult to say with certainty. The track was released in 1995 and doesn’t reference the character directly, but it does touch upon the same themes that were originally presented by ‘Space Oddity’. Specifically, it talks about the vastness of space and the nothingness that encapsulates anybody that thinks about it.
The track certainly isn’t a bad one; it’s great fun to listen to and is truly brought to life thanks to a feature from Pet Shop Boys’ Neil Tennant. However, despite the fact that Bowie managed to put together a great metaphorical track here, out of all four that surround the character of Major Tom, ‘Hallo Spaceboy’ is probably the weakest.
‘Blackstar’
Once again, the character of Major Tom isn’t directly referenced in the lyrics to ‘Blackstar’. Instead, he pops up (people believe) in the music video, as there is a still of a dead astronaut laid against the rock on an unknown planet. Given ‘Blackstar’ as a song and an album turned out to be a record where Bowie came to terms with his own death, many now believe the dead astronaut in the music video is supposed to be Bowie finally laying Major Tom to rest.
‘Blackstar’ divided opinion when people first heard it, as it was Bowie at his most experimental and dissonant. However, when you listen to the record with the power of hindsight, the emotional depth that Bowie manages to tap into is unlike anything else in his discography. The song is deeply emotional, both on a human level and an artistic one, as Bowie seemingly parts ways with the character who helped launch his career.
‘Ashes to Ashes’
Bowie wasn’t usually one to look back on old characters. As we see from the above entries, both of these Major Tom-centric songs are more implied as opposed to being blatant confrontations of the character. However, he decided to call back to his beloved character on his 1980 album Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) on the track ‘Ashes to Ashes’.
The song is one of Bowie’s very best, with a great rhythm to it and lyrics which are fun to read into that pay homage to one of Bowie’s very first characters. In the chorus, he makes a direct reference saying, “Ashes to ashes, funk to funky / We know Major Tom’s a junkie / Strung out in heaven’s high / Hitting an all-time low.” The song is one of Bowie’s greatest, but despite its brilliance, it falls slightly behind the number that actually started it all.
‘Space Oddity’
It might seem a bit easy to put the original Major Tom track at number one, but the fact remains, it’s an absolutely brilliant piece of music and continues to be one of Bowie’s greatest songs of all time. Our introduction to Major Tom is laced with melancholy, as Bowie ponders over a life in space, referencing how depressing it can be looking down on our planet and realising how little we actually are.
This was the perfect song for David Bowie to start his career with. It showed people how amazing his mind was, as he dabbled with a brand new character and wrote a song that was heavy in concept as a result. Who could really argue with the majesty of Bowie after this introduction? It was time to strap in and watch the career of one of the greatest creative minds to ever exist truly unfold.
