10 Rock Songs That Left Us All Hanging

The first ascent of David Bowie’s career almost counts more for perfect timing than anything else. While the Thin White Duke was always going to be a star one way or another, matching the release of Space Oddity around the same time as the moon landing was enough to get fans across the globe excited for what this extraterrestrial singer had in store next. It was the first success story, but that meant losing one of the first key figures in Bowie’s universe.

Throughout the song, you hear Major Tom going through different scenarios in his mind about how this space voyage will go, appearing very still and seeing how beautiful the Earth really is from above. Towards the end of the song though, Tom starts to spin more and more out of control, passing thousands of miles from the Earth until his ship starts wandering into the infinite voyage of space, with the transponders calling his name to no avail.

It would be a safe assumption to say that Tom’s story ended there, but he kept popping up in Bowie’s work years down the line. First we got the line of him being a junkie during Ashes to Ashes in the ‘80s, until Bowie finally found his whereabouts in the video for Blackstar, complete with a bedazzled skeleton. From the sound of his life, Tom’s voyage wasn’t for self destruction though. This man may have just been a bit too worldly for just one planet.