Day After Day #61: Life On Mars?

Day After Day is an ambitious attempt to write about a song every day in 2024 (starting on Jan. 4).

Life On Mars? (1971)

Picking a favorite David Bowie song is a difficult task because there are so many great ones. I don't even know if "Life On Mars?" is my favorite but it's the one that I'm going with here. The man had such a long and varied career and right until the end was producing incredible music. 

I first became aware of Bowie in 1980 when "Ashes to Ashes" came out off the Scary Monsters album. I had probably heard "Space Oddity" or "Changes" on the radio before that, but this was the first time I really knew who he was. I remember my mother talking about being freaked out by a TV appearance of his that she thought was Satanic, but I have no idea which one that was and as far as I know, he never wore a devil costume or anything like that. Who knows? Bowie wore some pretty wild outfits in the '70s that could scare a nice Christian lady, I suppose.

So my initial Bowie knowledge involved the '80s singles: "Ashes to Ashes," "Fashion," "Cat People" and the Let's Dance era, which totally blew up for him. As I listened to more rock radio, especially after we moved to the Boston area, I would hear more of the back catalog from the '70s. The first Bowie album I bought was The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, followed not long afterward by the hits collection ChangesBowie. He ended the '80s forming Tin Machine, a hard rock band with Reeves Gabrels and the Sales brothers; it wasn't his best work, but it was pretty fun to see him rocking out again.

As the '90s wore on, I started digging into the Bowie back catalog more. I had heard the big hits and was making my way through the deep cuts. One thing I regret is never seeing him in concert. Tickets usually went pretty quick when he would come through, and he was usually playing stadiums and the like, but I should have gone at least once. 

Of that incredible '70s run of albums, I particularly loved 1971's Hunky Dory. It was less rocking than his previous effort, The Man Who Sold the World, opting for an artier, piano-based sound (and appropriately enough, Rick Wakeman of Yes provided the piano work on the album). "Changes" is a classic, "Queen Bitch" and "Oh! You Pretty Things" are amazing, but "Life On Mars?" is timeless and magnificent. 

Apparently, Bowie wrote it as a parody of Frank Sinatra's "My Way," although I've never picked up on that. As it turned out, in 1968 Bowie (then a struggling songwriter) wrote English lyrics to a French song called "Comme d'habitude"; his lyrics were rejected and later Paul Anka rewrote it as "My Way," which became a monster hit for Sinatra. A few years later, Bowie did his own version, which was about a girl who escapes reality by going to the movies. 

"It's a godawful small affair/To the girl with the mousy hair/But her mummy is yelling, "No"/And her daddy has told her to go/But her friend is nowhere to be seen/Now she walks through her sunken dream/To the seat with the clearest view/And she's hooked to the silver screen/But the film is a saddening bore/For she's lived it ten times or more/She could spit in the eyes of fools/As they ask her to focus on/Sailors fighting in the dance hall/Oh man, look at those cavemen go. It's the freakiest show."

It's a cross between cabaret and glam rock, with a string section adding orchestral heft. The song ends with a grand flourish not unlike the theme from "2001: A Space Odyssey." Lyrically, the song refers often to Hollywood, which is interesting because in a few years, Bowie would begin occasionally acting in movies. The song was written right before Bowie invented the Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars conceit, but "Life On Mars?" refers to media coverage of the U.S. and Soviet Union racing to reach Mars.

Even though Hunky Dory came out in December 1971, "Life On Mars?" wasn't released as a single until mid-1973 when Bowie was at the height of his Ziggy fame. The song hit #3 on the UK Singles Chart, but later charted around the world after Bowie's death in 2016. 

There are many live performances of the song on YouTube from throughout Bowie's career, including the one below on The Tonight Show in 1980, featuring a young G.E. Smith on lead guitar. It was a showstopper whenever he sang it. 

Was it his best song? Maybe not, but it was up there.