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Starman (song)
"Starman" is a song by the English musician David Bowie. It was released on 28 April 1972 by RCA Records as the lead single of his fifth studio album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Co-produced by Ken Scott, Bowie recorded the song on 4 February 1972 at Trident Studios in London with his backing band known as the Spiders from Mars – comprising guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder and drummer Mick Woodmansey. The song was a late addition to the album, written as a direct response to RCA's request for a single; it replaced the Chuck Berry cover "Round and Round" on the album. The lyrics describe Ziggy Stardust bringing a message of hope to Earth's youth through the radio, salvation by an alien "Starman". The chorus is inspired by "Over the Rainbow", sung by Judy Garland, while other influences include T. Rex and the Supremes.
Upon release, "Starman" sold favorably and earned positive reviews. Following Bowie's performance of the song on the BBC television programme Top of the Pops, the song reached number 10 on the UK Singles Chart and helped propel the album to number five. It was his first major hit since "Space Oddity" three years earlier. The performance made Bowie a star and was watched by a large audience, including many future musicians, who were all affected by it; these included Siouxsie Sioux, Bono, Robert Smith, Boy George and Morrissey. Retrospectively, the song is considered by music critics as one of Bowie's finest.
"Starman" was written as a direct response to the head of RCA, Dennis Katz's, request for a single. Author Kevin Cann writes that the title may allude to Robert A. Heinlein's 1953 novel Starman Jones, while author Chris O'Leary attributes David Rome's 1965 short story "There's a Starman in Ward 7". The song was recorded on 4 February 1972 at Trident Studios in London, towards the end of the Ziggy Stardust sessions. Also recorded during this session was "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" and "Suffragette City". Co-produced by Ken Scott, Bowie recorded it with his backing band the Spiders from Mars, comprising Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey. Author Peter Doggett finds it similar to his earlier hit "Space Oddity" in that it is a "space-age novelty hit". The song begins on twelve-string acoustic guitar—a "subdominant" chord followed by "the major 7th of the root" according to Doggett—that is played across both channels. There are strums of a six-string electric guitar at certain points until the verse begins, then both guitars merge into one channel. The song features a string arrangement from Ronson, which biographer Nicholas Pegg describes as being more similar to the style of Bowie's previous album Hunky Dory (1971) than the rest of Ziggy Stardust.
The chorus is loosely based on "Over the Rainbow" from the film The Wizard of Oz (1939), alluding to the "Starman"'s extraterrestrial origins (over the rainbow) (the octave leap on ("Star-man") is identical to that of Judy Garland's ("some-where") in "Over the Rainbow"). Doggett states that whereas "Over the Rainbow" "used its cathartic rise to introduce a refrain that was emotionally, and melodically, expansive", the leap in "Starman" "was followed by a more uncertain melody, reflecting his character's innate lack of confidence." Pegg notes that Bowie would change the chorus to "There's a Starman, over the rainbow" during his performances at the Rainbow Theatre in August 1972, effectively establishing the connection between the two songs. Other influences cited for the track are the T. Rex songs "Hot Love" and "Telegram Sam", showcased on the line "Let all the children boogie" and "la la la" chorus, and the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On", which contained the same morse code-esque guitar and piano breaks as "Starman". The English rock band Suede later "borrowed" the same octave leap for their debut single "The Drowners" and the "la la la" chorus for "The Power" and "Beautiful Ones".
The lyrics describe Ziggy Stardust bringing a message of hope to Earth's youth through the radio, salvation by an alien 'Starman'. The story is told from the point of view of one of the youths who hears Ziggy. The song has inspired interpretations ranging from an allusion to the Second Coming of Christ, to an accurate prediction of the plot for the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Similar to fellow album track "Moonage Daydream", Bowie uses American slang, including "boogie", "Hey, that's far out", "Don't tell your papa", and "Some cat was layin' down some rock 'n' roll", which, according to Pegg, "vie with an intensely British sensibility to create a bizarre and beautiful hybrid." Speaking about the lyrics to William S. Burroughs for Rolling Stone magazine in 1973, Bowie said:
"Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a starman, so he writes "Starman", which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately. The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village. They don’t have a care in the world and are of no possible use to us. They just happened to stumble into our universe by black-hole jumping. Their whole life is traveling from universe to universe. In the stage show, one of them resembles Brando, another one is a black New Yorker. I even have one called Queenie the Infinite Fox."
According to Pegg, this "black-hole jumping" is identical to the BBC television programme Doctor Who serial The Three Doctors, which featured a reunion of the show's lead actors to celebrate its tenth anniversary. The serial was broadcast in early 1973 when Bowie was recording his follow up album Aladdin Sane.
"Starman" was released as the lead single of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on 28 April 1972 by RCA Records (as RCA 2199) with "Suffragette City" as the B-side. The single originally featured a "loud mix" of the "morse-code" piano-and-guitar section between the verse and the chorus. This single mix appeared on the original UK album, but not on other vinyl editions of the album internationally, in which the "morse-code" section was lower in the mix. The single mix appeared on the 1980 compilation album The Best of Bowie, but ChangesTwoBowie (1981) and subsequent compilations featured the more subdued mix, until the "loud mix" finally reappeared on Nothing Has Changed (2014) and on Re:Call 1 as part of the 2015 box set Five Years (1969–1973). According to Cann, the single was released in the US on 20 May 1972 with a slight variant from the UK single: Bowie's spoken intro was edited out and, "to comply with the preferred duration among American radio stations," the song was shortened by ten seconds. The US single was released in both mono and stereo formats. It was his first charting single in Canada.
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Starman (song)
"Starman" is a song by the English musician David Bowie. It was released on 28 April 1972 by RCA Records as the lead single of his fifth studio album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. Co-produced by Ken Scott, Bowie recorded the song on 4 February 1972 at Trident Studios in London with his backing band known as the Spiders from Mars – comprising guitarist Mick Ronson, bassist Trevor Bolder and drummer Mick Woodmansey. The song was a late addition to the album, written as a direct response to RCA's request for a single; it replaced the Chuck Berry cover "Round and Round" on the album. The lyrics describe Ziggy Stardust bringing a message of hope to Earth's youth through the radio, salvation by an alien "Starman". The chorus is inspired by "Over the Rainbow", sung by Judy Garland, while other influences include T. Rex and the Supremes.
Upon release, "Starman" sold favorably and earned positive reviews. Following Bowie's performance of the song on the BBC television programme Top of the Pops, the song reached number 10 on the UK Singles Chart and helped propel the album to number five. It was his first major hit since "Space Oddity" three years earlier. The performance made Bowie a star and was watched by a large audience, including many future musicians, who were all affected by it; these included Siouxsie Sioux, Bono, Robert Smith, Boy George and Morrissey. Retrospectively, the song is considered by music critics as one of Bowie's finest.
"Starman" was written as a direct response to the head of RCA, Dennis Katz's, request for a single. Author Kevin Cann writes that the title may allude to Robert A. Heinlein's 1953 novel Starman Jones, while author Chris O'Leary attributes David Rome's 1965 short story "There's a Starman in Ward 7". The song was recorded on 4 February 1972 at Trident Studios in London, towards the end of the Ziggy Stardust sessions. Also recorded during this session was "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" and "Suffragette City". Co-produced by Ken Scott, Bowie recorded it with his backing band the Spiders from Mars, comprising Mick Ronson, Trevor Bolder and Mick Woodmansey. Author Peter Doggett finds it similar to his earlier hit "Space Oddity" in that it is a "space-age novelty hit". The song begins on twelve-string acoustic guitar—a "subdominant" chord followed by "the major 7th of the root" according to Doggett—that is played across both channels. There are strums of a six-string electric guitar at certain points until the verse begins, then both guitars merge into one channel. The song features a string arrangement from Ronson, which biographer Nicholas Pegg describes as being more similar to the style of Bowie's previous album Hunky Dory (1971) than the rest of Ziggy Stardust.
The chorus is loosely based on "Over the Rainbow" from the film The Wizard of Oz (1939), alluding to the "Starman"'s extraterrestrial origins (over the rainbow) (the octave leap on ("Star-man") is identical to that of Judy Garland's ("some-where") in "Over the Rainbow"). Doggett states that whereas "Over the Rainbow" "used its cathartic rise to introduce a refrain that was emotionally, and melodically, expansive", the leap in "Starman" "was followed by a more uncertain melody, reflecting his character's innate lack of confidence." Pegg notes that Bowie would change the chorus to "There's a Starman, over the rainbow" during his performances at the Rainbow Theatre in August 1972, effectively establishing the connection between the two songs. Other influences cited for the track are the T. Rex songs "Hot Love" and "Telegram Sam", showcased on the line "Let all the children boogie" and "la la la" chorus, and the Supremes' "You Keep Me Hangin' On", which contained the same morse code-esque guitar and piano breaks as "Starman". The English rock band Suede later "borrowed" the same octave leap for their debut single "The Drowners" and the "la la la" chorus for "The Power" and "Beautiful Ones".
The lyrics describe Ziggy Stardust bringing a message of hope to Earth's youth through the radio, salvation by an alien 'Starman'. The story is told from the point of view of one of the youths who hears Ziggy. The song has inspired interpretations ranging from an allusion to the Second Coming of Christ, to an accurate prediction of the plot for the film Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Similar to fellow album track "Moonage Daydream", Bowie uses American slang, including "boogie", "Hey, that's far out", "Don't tell your papa", and "Some cat was layin' down some rock 'n' roll", which, according to Pegg, "vie with an intensely British sensibility to create a bizarre and beautiful hybrid." Speaking about the lyrics to William S. Burroughs for Rolling Stone magazine in 1973, Bowie said:
"Ziggy is advised in a dream by the infinites to write the coming of a starman, so he writes "Starman", which is the first news of hope that the people have heard. So they latch onto it immediately. The starmen that he is talking about are called the infinites, and they are black-hole jumpers. Ziggy has been talking about this amazing spaceman who will be coming down to save the earth. They arrive somewhere in Greenwich Village. They don’t have a care in the world and are of no possible use to us. They just happened to stumble into our universe by black-hole jumping. Their whole life is traveling from universe to universe. In the stage show, one of them resembles Brando, another one is a black New Yorker. I even have one called Queenie the Infinite Fox."
According to Pegg, this "black-hole jumping" is identical to the BBC television programme Doctor Who serial The Three Doctors, which featured a reunion of the show's lead actors to celebrate its tenth anniversary. The serial was broadcast in early 1973 when Bowie was recording his follow up album Aladdin Sane.
"Starman" was released as the lead single of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on 28 April 1972 by RCA Records (as RCA 2199) with "Suffragette City" as the B-side. The single originally featured a "loud mix" of the "morse-code" piano-and-guitar section between the verse and the chorus. This single mix appeared on the original UK album, but not on other vinyl editions of the album internationally, in which the "morse-code" section was lower in the mix. The single mix appeared on the 1980 compilation album The Best of Bowie, but ChangesTwoBowie (1981) and subsequent compilations featured the more subdued mix, until the "loud mix" finally reappeared on Nothing Has Changed (2014) and on Re:Call 1 as part of the 2015 box set Five Years (1969–1973). According to Cann, the single was released in the US on 20 May 1972 with a slight variant from the UK single: Bowie's spoken intro was edited out and, "to comply with the preferred duration among American radio stations," the song was shortened by ten seconds. The US single was released in both mono and stereo formats. It was his first charting single in Canada.