At Issue with Major Tom
In
David Bowie's famous song, "Space Oddity", or as everyone probably
knows it "Ground Control to Major Tom", the main character is an
astronaut called Major Tom who is leaving on a mission into outer space.
The song overall has a very ominous and uncertain tone, given to it by
the lyrics and the background instruments. It sounds like some sort of organ
and it does not give the song a very upbeat vibe. Pretty creepy actually. It is
said that the name of the song and the song itself is inspired by Stanley Kubrik's
movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which came out around that time. In that
movie, a trip to space doesn't end up turning out so well and likewise, in this
song, it appears that towards the end Major Tom gets lost in space. The
song and music video show the attitude at the time of going into space, an
attitude the song carried over from the movie that influenced it. People really
didn’t know what to think about it and the unknown scarred them.
~ Robert McDermott
I noticed a similar thing with the backing instruments. To me, slow and steady guitar strums over a synth doesn't quite capture the excitement of going into space. While I agree that the calmness of the instruments could come from a sense of trepidation, I don't think that that's the only reason for the song's slow tempo and chord progression. I think the tempo might convey a sort of longing to be lost in space, to leave the problematic world of 1969 behind. Then again, that may just be me.
ReplyDelete- Hayley A.
You make a good point and you definitely know more about music than I do, so I'll take your word for it. The slow tempo could certainly mean several things. Maybe it means a combination of both: it comes from a sense of apprehension that once we get further and further into space, we're going to get lost in it and not want to come back.
Delete- Robert
Obviously since it's a song there are tons of different ways to interpret a song, so I'm not really going to give my own take on the song since it would just be purely opinion since there's really no way to say what each part of the song really means. But I do think your interpretation was pretty good and gives a very viable interpretation of the song.
ReplyDelete