“Ground Control to Top Space Man”
An outfit calling themselves Alaska Robotics have created a wonderful new take on David Bowie’s 1969 classic, Space Oddity, with one major difference to the original…they’ve limited themselves to words taken only from the thousand most common words in English. As you might imagine, that places some restrictions on the original Bowie lyric.
Here are a few before and afters…
“Take your protein pills and put your helmet on” becomes: “Take your small food rocks and put your head-safe on”
“Planet Earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do” is now: “Home space ball is blue and there’s nothing I can do”
“Though I’m past one hundred thousand miles” translates to: “Though I’m past five hundred hundred hundred hundred feet”
Despite the new lyric not scanning quite as well as Bowie’s original, the new recording works remarkably well.
Molly Lewis, Marian Call, and Seth Boyer modified the lyrics and performed the song. Patrick Race had the original idea, and he filmed the hilarious version of the video (based on the original Bowie promo), with help from Ben Soileau and Aaron Suring.
We’ll leave you with the Alaska Robotics version of the lyrics so you can sing along to the video here.
SPACE WEIRD THING
(David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” translated into Up-go)
Ground control to top space man
Ground control to top space man
Take your small food rocks and put your head-safe on
Ground control to top space man
(ten, ten less one, ten less two, seven,
Start the numbers-down, big fires on
six, five, four, three, two, one, up-go!)
Check the start thing and may God’s love be with you…
This is Ground Control to top space man,
you’re really first in class
and the papers want to know which person’s shirts you wear
now it’s time to leave the space-house since you’re there
This is top space man to Ground Control,
I’m stepping through the door
and I’m relaxing in the air and it’s weird
and the stars look very different today
For here am I sitting in a lunch box, far above the world
Home space ball is blue, and there’s nothing I can do
Though I’m past five hundred hundred hundred hundred feet,
I’m feeling very cool
And I think my space car knows which way to go
Tell my wife I love her very much — she knows
Ground Control to top space man,
your talk line’s dead, there’s something wrong
Can you hear me, top space man? Can you hear me, top space man?
Can you hear me, top space man?
Can you….here — I’m relaxing in my lunch box
Far above the space night light ball
Home space ball is blue, and there’s nothing I can do