The 10 best songs about space
The finest rock and roll songs have always been about escapism. While artists may attempt to craft the next great love ballad, breakup anthem, or party track, many of the greatest songs envision a world of possibilities and dreams for a better future. Some artists fantasise about an improved earthly existence, while others, like Queen and David Bowie, ponder realms beyond our own.
Throughout rock history, many of the greatest artists have made allusions to space whenever they write their songs. Although the idea of getting into a space suit and journeying to new lands doesn’t always seem like the ideal fit for a hit single, there’s a lot of mystique around the idea of travelling through the deepest depths of the cosmos.
No longer having to play the game of existence on Earth, the greatest songs see a spaceship the same way that Bruce Springsteen sees a turnpike, being the universal highway that takes us away from everything on Earth weighing us down. From finding love on the other side of the universe or just drifting through space and transcending time, a certain poetic side of space gets captured every time people sing about living among the stars.
Then again, not every song is meant to be nearly that deep, and some of the best artists have made songs about the pleasures of working their way through the depths of space no one had seen before. It may seem mindless singing about space travel for the uninitiated, but when you look beyond what’s here on Earth, there’s a wealth to explore on the other side.
The 10 best songs about space:
10. ‘Love Walks In’ – Van Halen
Eddie Van Halen could have already been considered an alien living on Earth. Since he could push the guitar beyond what normal human thought could do, many suspect he was either a genius or dropped here from another planet. While Eddie was authentically human, Sammy Hagar did have his suspicions beyond the normal world in the song ‘Love Walks In’.
Having mentioned having numerous visions of aliens when he was a kid, Hagar equated any kind of human connection with some kind of otherworldly force no one can describe. Considering how rare it was for Van Halen to do ballads, hearing them sound so earnest talking about love was a breath of fresh air from David Lee Roth, who made it clear as day that he wasn’t talking about that sort of thing.
For Hagar, love could mean more than just the connection between two people. It was about being able to experience something bigger than yourself, and when that feeling hits you, it does tend to feel like standing on the edge of the world and jumping out into the depths of space.
9. ‘Planet Caravan’ – Black Sabbath
No one in Black Sabbath would be known as the sensitive type. As much as they may have made a decent tune, no one looks at someone like Ozzy Osbourne and thinks he should be the next answer to balladeers like Barry Manilow. Sabbath did have range when they wanted to, but their first proper ballad wasn’t about the typical love songs everyone else spat out.
After not being able to think of anything, Geezer Butler wrote the lyrics to ‘Planet Caravan’ about travelling around the universe in a spaceship as a first date. Despite the questions any woman would have about voyaging around the universe as a romantic weekend, the song is one of the most laid-back tracks on Paranoid, featuring some delicate solo work from Tony Iommi that was the antithesis of songs like ‘Iron Man’.
This also gave Iommi a greater chance to stretch out musically, quoting pieces from his favourite jazz guitar players like Joe Pass and Django Reinhart. Outside of Sabbath being able to conjure up songs from the depths of Hell, the fact that they can go from that to singing a stoned-out love song is an extraterrestrial feat on its own.
8. ‘Black Hole Sun’ – Soundgarden
Part of the appeal behind most grunge vocalists is that no one knew what the hell anyone was saying. Eddie Vedder was always hard to decipher at the best of times, and anyone able to tell the storyline going on in almost any Nirvana song is a better man than I. While Chris Cornell was always known to reach into his soul for most of Soundgarden’s lyrics, he decided to paint with words when making ‘Black Hole Sun’.
Despite Cornell’s insistence that the lyrics never meant much of anything, the song is a strange LSD-laced trip through the cosmos. Compared to the other famous songs Soundgarden spat out like ‘Spoonman’ and ‘Outshined’, the image of a black hole coming to wash everything away feels like it’s ripped straight out of a psychedelic nightmare, complete with a Beatles-style guitar slide throughout the verses.
The band also clearly had that black hole image in their mind for the breakdown, featuring a guitar anti-solo that sounds like the titular black hole is opening up and swallowing everything in its path. The song may sound beautiful when taken out of context, but if this kind of sun ever comes across your path as you look to the sky, it’s bound to be the end times.
7. ‘Subterranean Homesick Alien’ – Radiohead
Radiohead have never had problems making songs that relied on emotions. Throughout their first two albums, half the reason why Thom Yorke worked as a frontman was his ability to use his vocal cords to sound like the most dejected loner on tracks like ‘Fake Plastic Trees’. The band were never into music for the trends, though, and OK Computer gave us a strange trip up to the stars when Yorke got abducted by aliens.
Throughout every verse, Yorke talks about going outside to find an alien invasion happening in front of them, making the kind of home videos to show their kind what humanity really looks like. Even though Yorke gets to climb aboard their starship and find out what their civilisation is like, he never tells a soul what he saw, thinking that no one would believe or think he has gone crazy.
While that’s a founded fear for anyone claiming that they saw an alien, Yorke chalks everything up to feeling uptight, which is a lot more realistic for what his entire generation was feeling. Sometimes you feel like an alien in your own skin, and sometimes you feel like you’re not where you’re supposed to be…but maybe you’re just uptight.
6. ‘Set the Controls for The Heart of the Sun’ – Pink Floyd
The entire genesis of Pink Floyd can be broken up into different eras. As opposed to the version of the band that has been known as progressive rock giants, the band’s genesis began when Syd Barrett decided to showcase his psychedelic-tinged music to the world. Although he wouldn’t get to see the fruits of his labour come to fruition, Roger Waters’s first stabs at songwriting came from copying the kind of space rock Barrett had started.
Based on the Phyrigian mode of the minor scale, Waters sings about slowly travelling further towards the sun as every instrument is soaked in reverb. Out of all the songs to come out of the psychedelic movement, this one feels the most like sitting in the cockpit of a rocketship, waiting for takeoff and that apprehension of seeing the unknown.
Pink Floyd were already in for searching for new lands too, voyaging on a different kind of stardom now that their frontman was no longer going to be at the forefront. While space might seem like a nice escape for a lot of people to write about, Waters reminds us of all the dangers that come with going to new places that no one fully understands.
5. ‘Satellite of Love’ – Lou Reed
There were never any set rules when it came to Lou Reed’s music. As long as it suited what the song needed and was just weird enough to stand out from the rest of the pack, it went as far as he was concerned. Although Transformer marked the moment when he started flirting with the pop charts for the first time since The Velvet Underground, his biggest hits were more in tune with the stars than anything on Earth.
While ‘Satellite of Love’ works as a standard love song, the production is what sets it apart as delightfully space-age. Throughout the song, that satellite could either be a lot more sexual or mysterious depending on the scenario, as Reed’s voice echoes throughout the track after being soaked in echo.
Then again, that space element may also come courtesy of resident alien David Bowie, who oversaw the production of the album and sent everything into the stratosphere based with his incredible performance. Reed was always going to become a solo star, but he was never going to be confined to Earth’s limitations.
4. ‘Rocketman’ – Elton John
It was always anyone’s guess what Elton John was going to be singing about with Bernie Taupin at the helm. Since Taupin never played an instrument, he would usually come in with a full set of lyrics, leaving John to somehow translate that into music. Although John admitted that there were a lot of songs he couldn’t relate to, anyone on the roller coaster of fame can find something of themselves in ‘Rocketman’.
Inspired by the space race happening years before, Taupin’s words about an astronaut treating his job like a 9-5 exercise are a lot more poignant than the typical slice-of-life songs. In just a few chords, it feels like we know this guy as he gets up every morning and goes up to the stars to do his usual jobs day in and day out.
As a man who had seen the ups and downs of a pop career, John isn’t so different from the kind of Rocketman he sang about, spending years separated from his friends and family to make sure millions of people get entertained around the globe. The touring life might be hard to adapt to for anyone, but even after years in the business, it does still feel like a long long time.
3. ‘39’ – Queen
From day one, Queen never apologised for being too campy. Considering how much personality Freddie Mercury packed into one minute on stage, you knew that they were not going to be the chill singer-songwriter types on record. It was always about pushing the envelope, and Brian May set his sights on the stars when writing ‘39’.
Loving the sounds of folk songs when he was a kid, May thought it would be a great idea to take tracks about leaving on a ship and turning it into a spaceship. Taking off in 1939, the protagonist sets a course for the stars before realizing that, due to the time difference, he has aged only a year compared to a century on Earth, eventually coming home to meet his grandchildren.
The song also brilliantly depicts what space travel might be like, including Roger Taylor going for some of the highest notes of his career in the midsection before becoming too high and transitioning to May’s guitar. While it’s unclear whether Interstellar took the entire premise of this song for its storyline, someone might want to be asking Christopher Nolan a few questions about where he got the idea.
2. ‘Across the Universe’ – The Beatles
Every artist tends to have a few songs that fall out of the sky. While it’s easy to sit down with a pen and paper trying to figure out the perfect melody, it’s usually the best tracks that wake people up in the middle of the night and demand to be written. Paul McCartney had ‘Yesterday’, and towards the end of The Beatles’ career, John Lennon got a spacey vision on ‘Across the Universe’.
Being one of the last handful of masterstrokes Lennon would create with The Beatles, the song is about the poetry that comes with space both on Earth and around the known galaxy. Outside of talking about the spiritual side of life, Lennon paints a picture of the kind of art that can venture out into the universe, constantly seeing visions of undying love that shine around him in response.
For all of the disdain Lennon had towards the band’s material, he always thought that this song was one of the true peaks of his poetic career, despite not being happy with the final recording. Regardless of his feelings on the final product, this was more about Lennon’s message beyond the music. After years of selling pop music for the meat market, ‘Across the Universe’ was a reminder that The Beatles’ music was for the world rather than a passing trend.
1. ‘Space Oddity’ – David Bowie
There has never been an artist more suited for space travel than David Bowie. From his outlandish fashion sense to becoming everyone’s favourite rock and roll alien with Ziggy Stardust, Bowie was willing to make the strangest music that equalled what aliens might have made on their own planets. While he may have started off as a vaudeville star on his first album, the word was introduced to ‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ properly on ‘Space Oddity’.
Released right when the Apollo moon landing had begun, Bowie tapped into the zeitgeist by creating the character Major Tom searching for different lands. While the entire song feels like a mini movie playing out in your head, Bowie is the true star of the show, turning the song into a true journey up until Major Tom has to finally fade into the universe at the end.
Bowie would even revisit the theme when saying his final goodbyes, including a bejewelled skeleton in the video for the song ‘Blackstar’ meant to represent his first persona. Despite being tied to the space age of rock and roll, Bowie was more than just a far-out take on an extraterrestrial. He was an artist that only comes once a century, and he was going to use rock and roll as his medium to get in touch with higher forces beyond our earthly plane of existence.
