Songs for Space (Law): The Fabulous Forty

Explore The Songs for Space (Law): The Fabulous Forty

An Introduction by Professor Frans von der Dunk: The Origins

Many are the links between space and music – music as the most abstract of arts often offering the most appropriate means to capture and reflect the out-of-the-ordinary character of outer space, where words may easily seem to come up short. From the launch of a spacecraft as a first-magnitude dramatic event, naturally calling for the accompaniment of bombastic high-volume orchestration, to the immense emptiness of outer space, to be reflected by alienating minimal-music soundscapes: there’s nothing like a good piece of music to underscore the uniqueness of outer space and the space experience. Yet, few may have taken this seemingly natural linkage so literally as Professor Jack Beard: as soon as he started teaching classes in UNL’s LLM program in Space, Cyber and Telecommunications Law, he decided to use clips of music to set the mood, allowing students to come up with their respective favorites. It was this approach which inspired me to collect the musical choices of faculty, staff, alumni and students of the program in much more comprehensive fashion. I already had been collating a list of space-related songs for my own purposes, so I knew there was enough eligible material around – although I would soon find out there was much, much more than I had originally figured; currently the score is just over 400. What better way of reflecting the common spirit of the UNL program than allowing everyone involved with the program so interested to nominate his or her favorite pieces of music (classical, jazz, minimal music, pop or rock, hiphop or rap, whatever was of appeal) that have a close connection to space, and combine them into a single, major list – the Fabulous Forty? Frans von der Dunk, Leiden, July 2016

The Process

The process was fairly simple: everyone so interested could nominate up to twenty favorites. The eligibility criteria were quite generous: to be nominated a musical piece either had to reference one way or another ‘space’ or space-related names, items, or concepts in the title, or in the lyrics (if applicable), or had to be accompanied by video footage so referencing ‘space’ respectively be used as soundtrack for space-related footage. In addition, similar types of references to ‘Nebraska’ could substitute for references to ‘space’, to recognize UNL’s unique Space, Cyber and Telecommunications law program. Then, a simple scoring system awarded points from 20 for the individual #1 down to 1 for the individual #20, totaling the scores per song. Whenever songs ended with equal total points, pre-determined tie-breakers were used. Firstly, representing the spirit of the commonality of the UNL program, songs with more individual nominations would win out over songs with less. Secondly, songs with higher individual nominations would win out over songs with lower nominations – on the assumption that at the top of individual lists nominations should perhaps gain a little more than merely one point over the competitor one place down. If songs were still tied, simple seniority and first-to-file rules would decide – and they always allowed for final prioritization. Whilst originally the idea was to arrive at a TopTwenty only, with in the end 189 different songs nominated by 22 UNL SCTL program faculty, staff, alumni and students too many good songs would not have made it, so it became a FabForty instead – and still, a song needed at least two major nominations to make it to the final list. Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

The Summary Results

Following another set of additional nominations being handed in, this year’s Fabulous Forty has now extended from 217 songs to 287 altogether – almost 100 up from the 189 of the 2014 initial list.

The Top 4 remained unchanged, although #2, ‘Space Oddity’ by David Bowie, inched much closer to the still-ruling #1, Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ – no doubt partially due to the sad passing away of the former recently. A mere 3 points now separate the Top 2; maybe a change at the helm is in the offing for next year…? #3, ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, and #4, ‘Man On The Moon’, remained at respectful distances although also again picking up some points. Immediately below those, two Beatles songs swapped places #5 and #6, with ‘Across The Universe’ now topping ‘Here Comes To The Sun’. ‘Bad Moon Rising’, at #7, is now the last song to make it to a 100 points or more, as compared to five last year (and four for the 2014 list).

From place #8 down things get very tight, individual songs merely one or a few points apart. Minimal additional points by the new nominators thus already resulted in re-rankings. ‘The Final Countdown’ and ‘Intergalactic’ now lead the pack, at the expense primarily of  ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond’ and ‘Drops Of Jupiter’, followed by another Bowie song ‘Starman’ having achieved #12 (from #15 previously). Clearly Bowie remains the ultimate male single artist in space, and even as Pink Floyd lost one song in the Top Forty (‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun’ now relegated to #49) with three still in (at #10, #18, and #33) it still remains the space rock band par excellence – unless one would argue that the two aforementioned Beatles songs, totaling 231 points, should be counting (the three Floyd songs total 181 points only). The accolade of premier female artist in space has now moved from Sarah Bareilles – as one of her two previous Top Forty entries dropped out, the remaining one losing four places to end up at #31 – to Kate Perry with “E.T.” at #24.

Other major moves within the Top Forty concern ‘Also Sprach Zarathustra’, which at #15 picked up ten places compared to last year and ‘Walking On The Moon’ from #29 to #17. Meteoric rises into the Top Forty were enjoyed by ‘The Galaxy Song’ from Monty Python, jumping from #62 to #21, Devo’s ‘Space Junk’ from #53 to #34, John Williams’ ‘Star Wars Theme Song’ from #69 to #35 and Van Morrison’s ‘Moondance’ from #89 to #39, while the present #36, John Williams’ ‘The Imperial March’, even came out of nowhere, not having been nominated at all in previous years. ‘Sirius’ of the Alan Parsons Project, Nebraska’s stadium anthem, almost made it back into the Top Forty but stranded three points short at #44. As a consequence of some of the above, we had to say goodbye – at least for the time being – to ‘Kooyanisqatsi’, ‘Two Little Men In A Flying Saucer’, ‘Satellite Call’, ‘Major Tom’, and ‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun’.

In terms of celestial bodies, no less than seven titles now directly reference the Moon followed by the Sun with four, Jupiter with two, Venus with one – Earth is no longer explicitly represented in a song title! – plus two titles referencing ‘stars’ in general, one the galaxy and one ‘space’ in general. Apart from ‘Rocket Man’, now three other songs reference male astronauts, and just one a female.

Frans von der Dunk
Leiden, June 2016
Leiden, June 2016

1. Rocket Man by Elton John

1. Rocket Man (E. John, B. Taupin) – Elton John (4:42)
From the album ‘Honky Château’ (1972)
YouTube
258 Points
Elton John’s ‘Rocket Man’ makes clear he no longer necessarily considers himself a hero as an astronaut, but a professional who simply goes to work (“It’s just my job, five days a week”), with mixed feelings about leaving his family behind (“I miss the Earth so much, I miss my wife”). Still, our Rocket Man is on his way to Mars, which “ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids”. The good side of the routine character is that he counts on coming back, albeit that “it’s gonna be a long long time”. The song’s true author Bernie Taupin has admitted to use a Pearls Before Swine song of 1970 by the same name as source of inspiration, as well as David Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, who sometimes returned the favor by shouting “Oh Rocket Man” during performances of his own song. The closest the song actually came to space itself was in 1998, when Elton John performed it at the launch site of the ‘Discovery’ space shuttle at the occasion of STS-95 lifting off with John Glenn, then 77 years old on board – 37 years after his first flight with the Mercury Friendship capsule.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

2. Space Oddity by David Bowie

2. Space Oddity (D. Bowie) – David Bowie (3:49)
From the album ‘David Bowie’ (1969)
YouTube
  255 Points
‘Space Oddity’, one of Bowie’s best-known songs, both in its title and in its intro reflects on the movie ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ which by 1969 had been running for some time to great acclaim. The song tells the story of Major Tom, a fictional astronaut, formatted as ground-control-to-Major-Tom-and-vice-versa radio contact – which then breaks off, with Major Tom “floating” round in his “tin can”, “far above the Moon / planet Earth is blue / and there’s nothing I can do”. When Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield performed the song on board the International Space Station in May 2013, its video footage became the first music video shot in outer space. This event even gave rise to an analysis in The Economist of the legal implications of publicly preforming a copyrighted work of music while in Earth orbit – all the while, Bowie had granted permission. Following the great impact of the song (it was inter alia seen as ridiculing the British space program) Bowie was to revisit the figure of ‘Major Tom’ several times in other songs, such as ‘Ashes To Ashes’ and ‘Hallo Spaceboy’.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

3. Fly Me To The Moon by Frank Sinatra

3. Fly Me To The Moon (B. Howard) – Frank Sinatra (2:31)
From the album ‘It Might As Well Be Swing’ (1964)
YouTube 
197 Points
Frank Sinatra’s take on ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, written in 1954 by Bart Howard and originally entitled ‘In Other Words’, was just one of many famous ones amongst a total of over 300 covers of the latter. Other well-known versions have been performed by Johnny Mathis, Peggy Lee, Nat King Cole, Brenda Lee and Connie Francis. Nevertheless, the version of ‘The Voice’ is without doubt the best-known one, partly because of its association with the Apollo program. The Apollo 10 crew played the song on their moon-orbiting journey, and Apollo 11’s Buzz Aldrin played it after the Eagle had landed, making it the first song ever heard on the Moon. Diana Krall revisited it at the mission’s 40th anniversary in 2009, as well as – more solemnly – at the memorial service for Apollo 11 commander Neil Armstrong in 2012. Few people by now would at least have not thought about whether, given the chance, they would fly to the Moon, “play among the stars” and “see what spring is like / on Jupiter and Mars”. Needless to say, the song found its way onto many soundtracks, running from ‘Sesame Street’ to the movie flicks ‘Wall Street’ and ‘Bridget Jones’s Diary’.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

4. Man On The Moon by R.E.M.

4. Man On The Moon (M. Stipe) – R.E.M. (5:14)
From the album ‘Automatic For The People’ (1992)
YouTube 
152 Points
This song actually has someone mocking the moon landings (“if you believed they put a man on the moon – yeah, yeah, yeah”) as if it is naïve not to see the conspiracies behind it – and not cool to take the moon landings seriously. As “a little agit for the never-believer” the lyrics link this mentality to a certain ‘Andy’, read performer and entertainer Andy Kaufmann habitually engaging in elaborate ruses and pranks. Kaufmann had died two years before the song’s release, followed by rumors that he had actually faked his death. The story coming full circle, the 1999 movie based on Kaufmann’s life was named ‘Man on the Moon’, and the song itself used for its soundtrack. At the time, the theory that the Moon landings were faked indeed had gained a lot of supporters, and would lead to such famous incidents as conspiracy-believer Bart Sibrel luring Buzz Aldrin of Apollo 11-fame to a hotel in 2002, shoving a camera in his face, demanding he swear to God he had actually landed, when Aldrin refused to do so calling him “a coward, a liar and a thief” – and then almost being floored by a punch from the astronaut.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

5. Across The Universe by The Beatles

5. Across The Universe (J. Lennon, P. McCartney) – Beatles (3:47)
From the album ‘Let It Be’ (1970)
You Tube
122 Points
The Universe is “all of space-time and everything that exists therein, including all planets, stars, galaxies, the contents of intergalactic space, the smallest subatomic particles, and all matter and energy”, presumably almost 14 billion years old and – as far as we can observe – some 46 billion light years in radius. It is across this stretch, that the Beatles, on their last recorded album saying ‘goodbye’ to the universe of popular music, see their words “slip away”. Meanwhile “limitless undying love” “which shines (…) like a million suns” calls the song’s author – John Lennon – “on and on”. The song was inspired by Lennon’s then-wife Cynthia as much as by the Sanskrit mantra “Jai Guru Deva OM” (meaning ‘glory to the shining remover of darkness’). Called by one critic a ‘cosmic ballad’, in 2008 – true to its title and inter alia to celebrate its forty years on record (as it had first been recorded two years before the ‘Let It Be’ release) – ‘Across The Universe’ became the first song ever to be intentionally transmitted into deep space: NASA broadcast it in the direction of the star Polaris, 431 light years from the Earth. Unfortunately, we cannot say anything on its reception there.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

6. Here Comes The Sun by The Beatles

6. Here Comes The Sun (G. Harrison) – Beatles (3:07)
From the album ‘Abbey Road’ (1969)
YouTube 
109 Points
Lennon and McCartney are usually hailed as one of the best songwriter duos in the history of music, with the side-effect of largely obscuring the song-writing qualities of George Harrison, ‘The Silent One’. Indeed, fairly little of Harrison’s writing made it into a Beatles-song proper. Also this particular one started out as a B-side to the single ‘Oh Darling’ (a Lennon/McCartney composition), and when recorded, only McCartney and Starr (and a few non-credited classical instrumentalists) lent a hand. Feeling underrated and underestimated, in 1969 Harrison had temporarily quit the band, had sought solace in marijuana (and been arrested for possession thereof) and then, in April, fed up in particular with all that business of being in The Beatles, discovered the garden of his good friend Eric Clapton. That month was standing out in terms of sunlight hours, and wandering around with an acoustic guitar of his host his temporary relief was transformed into ‘Here Comes The Sun’. Famous astronomer Carl Sagan in the 1970s proposed the song to be carried with the Voyager deep space-craft as a highlight of human civilization to be presented to any extra-terrestrials interested therein, but copyright issues ultimately torpedoed these plans.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

7. Bad Moon Rising by Creedence Clearwater Revival

7. Bad Moon Rising (J. Fogerty) – Creedence Clearwater Revival (2:21)
From the album ‘Green River’ (1969)
YouTube 
102 Points
‘Bad Moon Rising’ is one of those many songs on Creedence Clearwater Revival’s roster which makes you believe the band from sunny California is actually from the sinister swamps of the Deep South. In line with old lore and superstition addressing magic powers to the Earth’s closest neighbor in outer space, the ‘Bad Moon’ is equivalent to (an omen for) “trouble on the way”, such as “earthquakes” or bouts of “lightnin’”. Fogerty was inspired to write the song by a hurricane scene in the movie ‘The Devil and Daniel Webster’, and claimed it addresses “the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us”. The message thus seems unequivocally clear – nevertheless, many managed to mishear the chorus line “there’s a bad moon on the rise” as “there’s a bathroom on the right”, which singer and lead guitarist John Fogerty then started parodying regularly. The song became one of CCR’s biggest hits, was covered amongst others by Jerry Lee Lewis and Emmylou Harris and found its way onto a number of soundtracks – unsurprisingly, largely on the subjects of werewolves, twilight zones and walking dead, rather than on outer space.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

8. The Final Countdown by Europe

8. The Final Countdown (J. Tempest) – Europe (5:11)
From the album ‘The Final Countdown’ (1986)
YouTube 
85 Points
The idea of ‘counting down’ towards a launch (rather than ‘counting (up) to ten’) is usually credited to German film director Franz Lang, who used it for his 1929 movie ‘Frau im Mond’ (‘Woman on the Moon’) to heighten the drama of the launch of the rocket – although it had already been used as early as the 1860s to kick off a Cambridge University boat race. In any event, the approach stuck, and became common currency once mankind started to actually send craft into outer space. ‘The Final Countdown’, the largest hit of the band from Sweden (which had just become a member of the European Union, or ‘Europe’ for short), almost did not make it onto record, as most of the band members at first did not think it would make a good record – or even was merely doable. “Thank God they didn’t listen to me”, said guitarist John Norum afterwards. The lyrics were presumably inspired by Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity’, even as this song talks about being launched together – and to Venus specifically, although with a reference to “so many light years to go” this should probably not be taken as a precise definition of the travel destination.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

9. Intergalactic by the Beastie Boys

9. Intergalactic (Beastie Boys, M. Caldato) – Beastie Boys (4:34)
From the album ‘Hello Nasty’ (1998)
YouTube
84 Points
‘Galaxies’ are the largest imaginable ‘unit’ in the Universe – one level below the Universe itself as it were – usually consisting of between tens of millions and hundreds of trillions of stars. Its Wikipedia definition runs: “a massive, gravitationally bound system consisting of stars, stellar remnants, an interstellar medium of gas and dust, and dark matter”. The word comes from an ancient Greek word for ‘milky’ – and of course the Milky Way is our own little home galaxy, comprising a few hundreds of billions of stars including our very own Sun. And so on. Beastie Boys, the only rep of rap in outer space as the only hip hop act on our FabForty list, essentially uses the reference to the galaxies as the largest hyperbole it could find for purposes of self-promotion of the ‘I’ figure in the song as he (presumably) addresses someone in need of being impressed. The song samples elements from various corners, mostly from Russian classical composers and from two movies, of which at least the sci-fi ‘From Beyond’ bears some relationship to outer space. A hip hop into the galaxies instead of a ‘small step for [a] man’ on the Moon, as it were.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

10. Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd

10. Shine On You Crazy Diamond (R. Wright, R. Waters, D. Gilmour) – Pink Floyd (25:47)
From the album ‘Wish You Were Here’ (1975)
YouTube 
83 Points
While Pink Floyd for many was the ultimate ‘space rock band’, this song strictly speaking is not about outer space even as it references the Sun, ‘black holes in the sky’ and the Moon. But then again: put your headphones’ volume on max, close your eyes and you’ll feel like an aural witness to Creation, to the first rising Sun ever. Still, the ‘Diamond’ of note is former founder and band-leader Syd Barrett, and the epic suite addresses (the memories of) his tragic personality- and drug-induced incapacitation, estrangement and subsequent demise from the band, some 17 years before. Note that (accidentally?) the initials of the song include ‘S’, ‘Y’ and ‘D’. The ‘O’ and the ‘C’ in between could then almost stand for ‘On Cue’, as it so happened that an already mentally-lost Syd showed up himself unannounced and completely unexpectedly in the studio at one of the final mixing sessions of this very song about himself. He remained unnoticed by his former band mates until commenting on the obsessiveness with which the band was trying to get it right and thereby was finally recognized – following which bass guitarist Roger Waters acknowledged “I was in f***ing tears”.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

11. Drops Of Jupiter by Train

11. Drops Of Jupiter (Train) – Train (4:18)
From the album ‘Drops Of Jupiter’ (2001)
YouTube 
82 Points
Jupiter is the largest planet in our Solar System, more than 300 times the mass and more than 1,300 times the volume of the Earth. It orbits at a distance of on average some 750 million kilometers around the Sun. It is also, appropriately, named after the King of the Gods of ancient Roman times. The track ‘Drops Of Jupiter’ (or more precisely ‘Drops Of Jupiter (Tell Me)’, to distinguish between song and album) by the American rock band Train, however, is about a man wondering (“tell me”) whether a woman's efforts to find herself still leave room for him. Purportedly, the opening lines came to lead singer Patrick Monahan in a dream, strangely enough inspired by his mother who had died after a struggle with cancer. It is those opening lines which depict the return of the addressed one’s “soul vacation” as “back in the atmosphere / with drops of Jupiter in her hair”; later the song also references the Moon, the Sun, a falling star and the Milky Way – all metaphors of how apparently out of reach she had been, and, as the singer fears, perhaps still might be.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

12. Starman by David Bowie

12. Starman (D. Bowie) – David Bowie (4:19)
From the album ‘The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars’ (1972)
YouTube
81 Points
David Bowie’s second song in the FabForty, also historically the follow-up as a major hit to the first, is considerably more ambitious in its message than ‘Space Oddity’. In the context of the story of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, in which the end of the world is but five years away, the ‘Starman’ is an extraterrestrial power using rock star Ziggy as his ambassador on Earth promising hope and salvation in particular for the Earth’s youth. Emanating from “hazy cosmic jive” a radio message announces the need for children to boogie as the Starman seemingly awaits the right moment to descend from the skies himself. Interpretations abounded, ranging from an accurate prediction of the plot for the ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ movie (which would come out in 1977) to an allusion of the Second Coming of Christ. Such interpretations did not come out of the blue, either: the whole Ziggy Stardust figure was inspired, to start with, by the real-life figure of Vince Taylor, a British rock ‘n’ roll singer who had had a breakdown – and then thought he was a crossing between a god and an alien.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

13. Walkin' On The Sun by Smash Mouth

13. Walkin On The Sun (Smash Mouth) – Smash Mouth (3:23)
From the album ‘Fush Yu Mang’ (1997)
YouTube
79 Points
‘Walking On The Sun’ is the debut single of the US rock band Smash Mouth, successful in reaching the #1 position on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart. Walking on the Sun – in contrast to walking on the Moon – is of course not possible in reality, both because of the gaseous character of the ‘surface’ and of its heat (at that surface it is still some 2 million degrees Celsius hot). Already the title therefore reflects the irony with which the band surveys the hippie movement, the target of the lyrics. You may “teach the world to sing in perfect harmony” – a reference to a 1970s hippie hit single of the New Seekers and the Hillside Singers entitled ‘I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing (In Perfect Harmony)’– but “you might as well be walkin’ on the sun”. And by being too involved with their own hippie-happiness, they might ‘burn’ the opportunity to learn their children something useful for real-world life. The video confirms that there is nothing further to be added from a space perspective – even the Sun itself is only indirectly represented, through its shine on some hippie happy faces. Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

14. Kryptonite by 3 Doors Down

14. Kryptonite (B. Arnold, M. Roberts, T. Harrell) – 3 Doors Down (3:55)
From the album ‘The Better Life’ (2000)
YouTube 
76 Points
‘Kryptonite’ is the fictional mineral that forms the ultimate natural weakness of Superman and his fellow inhabitants of the planet Krypton – his Achilles’ heel, as it were. Being fictional, there are of course no hard facts available about this planet, its composition, size or place in any solar system or galaxy. Its civilization, however, according to the storyline should be considered to be anywhere between considerably and immensely advanced as compared to ours. In the song, 3 Doors Down steps in the shoes of Superman, using his “superhuman might” to keep his beloved “by [his] side”, as he sees “the world float / to the dark side of the moon”. Main author Brad Arnold (who claimed he basically wrote ‘Kryptonite’ during math class at school) denies that this was a conscious reference to the legendary Pink Floyd album by that name – he labeled it “just a happenstance line”. So an unconscious reference then, perhaps? In any event, like that album for the Floyd, for 3 Doors Down this song continues to be seen by many as its signature track, and certainly remains its most successful.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

15. Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss (Op. 31)

15. Also Sprach Zarathustra (Richard Strauss, Op. 31) – Chicago Symphony Orchestra, with Klaus Tennstedt (35:08)
Tone poem (1896)
YouTube
75 Points
Strictly speaking it is only the introductory part (‘Einleitung, oder Sonnenaufgang’ read ‘Introduction, or Sunrise’) of the 35-minute tone poem which has become world-famous, as an aural ‘visualization’ of launches into outer space. The piece has thus effectively become a four-stage rocket itself. Firstly, Zarathustra was an ancient Persian philosopher in the seventh century B.C. establishing the Zoroastrian ‘faith’, viewing the human condition as a mental struggle between truth and lie. Secondly, the nineteenth century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was sufficiently inspired by Zoroastrian philosophy to write the novel ‘Also sprach Zarathustra: Ein Buch für Alle und Keinen’ (‘Thus spake Zarathustra: A book for all and none’) in 1883-5, focusing on the eternal recurrence of events, declaring the death of God (if not religion) and prophesizing the advent of an ‘Übermensch’ (which considerably was to shade Nietzsche’s philosophical inheritance after the Nazis ran with the concept). Thirdly, Richard Strauss was then in turn inspired enough to write his tone poem, to – fourthly – become used again and again in space-related footage and contexts. Beyond a plethora of documentary films this runs the gamut from ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ to gatherings of surviving Apollo astronauts.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

16. Counting Stars by OneRepublic

16. Counting Stars (R. Tedder) – OneRepublic (4:43)
From the album ‘Native’ (2013)
YouTube
71 Points
‘Counting Stars’, the most successful song to date of US rock band OneRepublic (#1 positions on twelve hit lists, including the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, with over four million copies sold), is an alternative to ‘counting sheep’ or, as the song claims, “counting dollars” – and one which presumably better reflects the true values in and of life: the ‘stars’ stands for the blessings of life, love and hope. No more “loosing sleep”, hopefully! Once again then space is mainly used as a metaphor for the really important, the really big, the really eternal – actually counting stars would be a never-ending affair: the best estimate has the number of stars in the ballpark range of 300 sextillion, read 3 x 1023, read 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. By comparison: the number of sheep currently roaming Earth runs a little over one billion, read 1,078, 200,000; the number of dollars currently in circulation is estimated as a little over a trillion, read 1,280,000,000,000. Even multiplying the number of living sheep with the number of circulating dollars would not get you anywhere near the total number of observable stars – you would still have to multiply by 300… Hello? Are you still there?
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

17. Walking On The Moon by the Police

17. Walking On The Moon (Sting) – Police (5:02)
From the album ‘Regatta De Blanc’ (1979)
YouTube
65 Points
The original story behind this song by singer-songwriter Sting is too good not be taken straight from the horse’s mouth: “[I] was drunk in a hotel room in Munich, slumped on the bed with the whirling pit when this riff came into my head. I got up and starting walking round the room singing: 'Walking round the room, walking round the room'. That was all. In the cool light of morning I remembered what had happened and I wrote the riff down. But 'Walking round the room' was a stupid title so I thought of something even more stupid which was 'Walking on the moon'.” There is, however, something to walking on the Moon resembling drunkenness, as twelve Apollo astronauts have actually experienced: the uncertainty of moving around in 1/6 of normal gravity and a suit designed to stifle all limb movements, including those normally engaged in walking. Drunkenness – or love, as love can also provide for a relative sense of diminished gravity. The accompanying video was shot at Kennedy Space Center (from where all moonwalkers had left the Earth), surrounded by spacecraft and with Police drummer Stewart Copeland actually testing his drumsticks on a Saturn V hanging around there.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

18. Eclipse by Pink Floyd

18. Eclipse (R. Waters) – Pink Floyd (2:01)
From the album ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ (1973)
YouTube
62 Points
An ‘eclipse’ is a well-known astronomical phenomenon, whereby one celestial body is ‘obscured’ by another from the Earth’s vantage point. Focusing on Sun and Moon, in the context of this song and album the metaphor was to refer to the relativity of one’s perspective on the opposing forces in life, and the possibility to take one’s life into one’s own hand by changing one’s perspective. When Pink Floyd, after some touring with early versions of ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, was beginning to record the album, Roger Waters felt that the suite, which until then had ended with ‘Brain Damage’, was lacking a convincing finale – and wrote ‘Eclipse’. In the out-tro of the song he then used perhaps the most famous snippet of spontaneously-recorded spontaneously-spoken fragments ever put on record: Abbey Roads’ doorman Gerry O’Driscoll had answered (to Waters’ prompting of what ‘the dark side of the moon’ meant to him) “There is no dark side of the moon, really. Matter of fact, it's all dark.” Whilst he had actually then added “The only thing that makes it look alight is the sun", this last bit did not make it onto the record.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

19. Champagne Supernova by Oasis

19. Champagne Supernova (N. Gallagher) – Oasis (7:28)
From the album ‘(What’s The Story) Morning Glory’ (1996)
YouTube
60 Points
Oasis toasts a supernova, a stellar explosion briefly outshining an entire galaxy and radiating as much energy as our own Sun is calculated to emit over its entire lifespan before fading from view over several weeks or months, with champagne as the place where “we were getting high” – but: “where were you”? Noel Gallagher, the songwriter, claims he still is unsure what he really meant, saying the song’s lyrics were “as psychedelic as I’ll ever get”. Whether or not in spite of such uncertainty, the closing song on Oasis’ most legendary album remains a fan favorite. Following which in 2003 a passing supernova catalogued as SN 2003fg would be nicknamed ‘Champagne Supernova’ after the song – life imitating art imitating life. And then some: Noel Gallagher, who had always maintained a stormy relationship with his brother Liam the lead singer, finally stormed off in 2009 – yes, as a supernova, also happening to make ‘Champagne Supernova’ the last of their own songs Oasis performed together. To the extent necessary, many covers keep the song alive and kicking; covering artists include such luminaries as Hootie & the Blowfish, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Snow Patrol, Green Day and The Killers.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

20. Talking To The Moon by Bruno Mars

20. Talking To The Moon (B. Mars et al.) – Bruno Mars (3:38)
From the album ‘Doo-Wops & Hooligans’ (2011)
YouTube
55 Points
The lyrics of ‘Talking To The Moon’ actually address a failed relationship: “you’re somewhere out there / somewhere far away / I want you back”, but the main protagonist wonders whether he is actually talking to the Moon – and then “hopes you’re on the other side talking to me too”. So ‘space’ stands for ‘loneliness’ here (in particular as the ‘other side’ of the Moon referenced is also its ‘dark side’). Bruno Mars, by the way, is the artist name of Peter Gene Hernandez – currently one of the most successful solo artists world-wide. Ever since he was two years old, ‘Bruno’ was his nickname given by his father (in reference to professional wrestler Bruno Sammartino, to whom little Bruno apparently showed some resemblance); the ‘Mars’ was added when he was 17 and trying to start a career in music in Los Angeles. As he stated himself: “I felt like I didn't have [any] pizzazz, and a lot of girls say I’m out of this world, so I was like I guess I'm from Mars.” Bruno Mars and outer space do go together a bit further with songs called ‘Moonshine’ and ‘Rocketeer’, but that’s about as close as it gets…
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

21. The Galaxy Song by Monty Python

21. The Galaxy Song (M. Python) – Pink Floyd (2:01)
From the album ‘Monty Python Sings’ (1983)
YouTube
55 Points
Probably by now the most famous comedy troopers in the Galaxy (or at least the English-speaking parts thereof), Monty Python recorded this song for the 1983 movie ‘The Meaning Of Life’, notably incorporating it in the sketch ‘Live Organ Transplants’. To convince Mrs. Brown (Terry Jones) to donate a liver to a surgeon conspicuously looking like John Cleese, Eric Idle accompanies her on a short trip across the Galaxy, impressing upon her the vastness thereof: the Earth revolving at 900 miles an hour (roughly correct if ‘rotation’ is what is actually meant, ‘revolving’ being used for rhyming purposes) with an orbiting speed of 19 miles per second (roughly correct) in a Galaxy 200,000,000 light years long by 16,000 light years thick with the Sun about 30,000 light years from the Galactic center (also all roughly correct). Also, he smugly notes that her chances of having been born are almost zero, and that she should “pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space, ‘cause it’s bugger all down here on Earth“. Needless to say, Mrs. Brown returns convinced of the need to donate a liver.
Frans von der Dunk, Leiden, June 2016

22. Supermassive Black Hole by Muse

22. Supermassive Black Hole (M. Bellamy) – Muse (3:29)
From the album ‘Black Holes And Revelations’ (2006)
YouTube
53 Points
Black holes are a space phenomenon more or less discovered by Karl Schwarzschild in 1916, although for about half a century their existence remained largely a matter of theory – precisely because they refer to regions in space from which, presumably, extra-ordinary gravity prevents anything, including light, from escaping. The center of our Milky Way is now calculated to be a supermassive black hole of some 4.3 million times the mass of our Sun. This then is what the British band Muse sings about: the beloved addressee of the song makes glaciers melt in the dead of night and superstars disappear into the supermassive black hole. The accompanying video involved masked and mirror-clad dancers in a dark mirror-rich room as well as brief flashes of a black circle as a simple depiction of a black hole. Further to the name of the album as well as other songs (‘Knights Of Cydonia’, ‘Space Dementia’ and ‘Starlight’), the fascination of Muse with outer space is broader than just the single song, although the latter clearly remains in the realm of metaphor and hyperbole, rather than actual astrophysics or cosmography.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

23. Venus by Bananarama

23. Venus (Bananarama) – Bananarama (3:38)
From the album ‘True Confessions’ (1986)
YouTube
50 Points
‘Venus’ is one of only two songs in the FabForty unequivocally about a female ‘subject’ – space is still very much a male-dominated domain in perception and music. Venus is also the planet closest to Earth (both in terms of orbits, about 0.7 times of the latter’s mean distance to the Sun, and of size, with about 0.815 times the Earth’s mass), but much drier, denser and hotter. It is also, after the Moon, the brightest natural object in the night sky. Probably for the latter reason, it is named after the ancient Roman Goddess of Love – which is what the three British girls of Bananarama really sing about. Hugely successful as a single (with #1 spots in seven countries including the United States and top ten placements in fifteen others), it is actually a more snappy and poppy cover version of a song which had given Shocking Blue, a Dutch band with singer Mariska Veres fronting three male instrumentalists, their greatest hit in 1969 (with a #1 spot equally in seven countries including the United States and 7.5 million copies sold worldwide). The Dutch version was also nominated but did not make it to the final FabForty list.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

24. E.T. by Katy Perry

24. E.T. (K. Perry et al.) – Katy Perry (3:27)
From the album ‘Teenage Dream’ (2010)
YouTube
50 Points
‘E.T.’ is one of Katy Perry’s most successful songs to date, the single having sold over six million digital downloads world-wide. ‘E.T.’, short for ‘Extra-Terrestrial’, also happened to be one of the best-selling movies of all time: a sympathetic Steven Spielberg-filmed story on an extra-territorial cutie somehow having landed on Earth and making friends with a lonely boy Elliott (note the first and last letter of his name), which hit the theatres in 1982 and generated close to 800 million US$ in box office earnings. E.T.’s wish to ‘Phone home’ became the iconic one-liner expressing homesickness. While many spacey images are used by the lyrics (“a bar out in Mars / when they’re driving spaceships”), Katy Perry uses the image of an extra-terrestrial predominantly to illustrate the extra-ordinary character of (falling in) love: “you’re from a whole ‘nother world / a different dimension”, even as “they callin’ me an alien” as well, “a big-headed astronaut”, so “kiss me” – etcetera. The accompanying video also used space images, involving UFOs, spacecraft and Perry as an alien visitor drifting towards, then landing on a seemingly abandoned Earth while undergoing some transformations herself.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

25. Cosmic Girl by Jamiroquai

25. Cosmic Girl (Jamiroquai) – Jamiroquai (3:27)
From the album ‘Traveling Without Moving’ (1996)
YouTube
50 Points
The song was culled from the album ‘Travelling Without Moving’, which could be interpreted as an original reference to the relativity of moving in outer space. The song, for sure, sings about a love for “some baby Barbarella” (a leading character in a rather naughty sci-fi flick of the late sixties, starring young Jane Fonda), who wants to go “star-trekking”; a true “cosmic girl / from another galaxy”, or more accurately “from a quasar / forty million light years away”. So the singer’s heart is “at zero gravity”, and so on. A quasar, by the way, is an ‘active galactic nucleus’, in case you were not aware. Jamiroquai, a British funk/acid jazz band, wrote and performed at least one other song with a spacey title, ‘Space Cowboy’ – maybe the best match for the ‘Cosmic Girl’? The official video accompanying the song, rather than involving spaceships or astronauts (male/female), features very fast Italian racecars, of which the Ferrari F40 incidentally was on loan from Nick Mason, who had earned his fortunes by drumming for Pink Floyd on ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ – a place presumably not of great interest at this point in time for ‘Cosmic Girl’ and her lover.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

26. Spaceman by The Killers

26. Spaceman (The Killers) – Killers (4:36)
From the album ‘Day & Age’ (2008)
YouTube
46 Points
Meet ‘Spaceman’, who “was hoping” that he “could leave this star-crossed world behind” as an astronaut hero, but instead was “ripped” from his bed, his blood type taken and his body cut open, after which he more or less changed his mind about such a career. He also clearly lost his bearings: his “global positioning systems are vocally addressed / they say the Nile used to run from East to West”. Of course, the Nile runs roughly from South to North, and that is also how any receiver of satellite positioning signals would be calibrated. Is it abduction by aliens then, is it all a dream turned into nightmare, is he disenchanted by the world – or is it all merely a hyperbole, as space is so often used to illustrate fundamental human conundrums? The Killers’ preceding single, after all, had been a song entitled ‘Human’; another song on ‘Day & Age’ (described by Killers front man Brandon Flowers as “like looking at Sam's Town [the preceding Killers album] from Mars"”) was about ‘The World We Live In’. On the other hand, no other space themes were used – at least visibly – for such purposes.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

27. We Are All Made Of Stars by Moby

27. We Are All Made Of Stars (Moby) – Moby (3:39)
From the album ‘18’ (2002)
YouTube
46 Points
See the accompanying video, with ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’-inspired themes and imagery: Moby moves around in a full-fledged astronaut suit – visiting a fast food emporium, making photocopies and shopping around – in an environment filled with Hollywood-lifestyle excesses to signify he’s really from another world. Ergo, either he’s not a star or we are all stars – ‘We Are All Made Of Stars’ builds on the assumption that everything in the Universe is at least made of stardust. The song was purportedly inspired by a post-9/11 desire to regenerate hope and hopefulness in the future – “no one can stop us now / ‘cause we are all made of stars” – although there also is a sense of inevitability concerning life cycles when not only “people they come together” but also “people they fall apart” – back and forth all the time. Moby, whose real name is Richard Melville Hall, is considered one of the most successful and influential electronic dance-focused artists of today, having worked with an amazing variety of legends including Michael Jackson, David Bowie, Daft Punk, Brian Eno, the Pet Shop Boys, Britney Spears, Public Enemy, Guns ‘N’ Roses, Metallica and Soundgarden.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

28. Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden

28. Black Hole Sun (C. Cornell) – Soundgarden (5:20)
From the album ‘Superunknown’ (1994)
YouTube
41 Points
Arguably the most well-known and most recognizable song from this American band, ‘Black Hole Sun’ was written in some 15 minutes only. Soundgarden’s front man and author of the song Chris Cornell, however, originally thought the band was not going to like it – but, of course, it did. “Sort of a surreal dreamscape”, it reflects an impossible contradiction even in outer space – “Sun” usually being synonymous with the brightest object in outer space (at least from terrestrials’ limited vantage point) whereas “black holes” by definition let no light whatsoever escape. The contradiction is hardly elaborated in the song, however, where the main message is a complaint about loneliness – nothing to be taken too literally, as per the author’s own words. Black holes of some sort figured in the video, operating on the scale of the cornfield where Soundgarden was performing the song – the references to outer space thereby effectively becoming largely ephemeral. The song was covered by an honorable list of luminaries, nevertheless, running the gamut from Paul Anka to Peter Frampton and Anastacia, as well as a parody by Weird Al Yankovich.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

29. Telstar by Tornados

29. Telstar (Meek) – Tornados (3:37)
Single (1962)
YouTube
40 Points
As Professor Hurwitz succinctly stated with reference to the FabForty: this song “is about the first Telstar satellite and topped the charts in the US an UK. It's got to be included!” Telstar had been launched into orbit by a Thor-Delta rocket on 10 July 1962, becoming the first satellite successfully relaying television pictures (including the first live transatlantic television feed), phone calls and fax images. Its orbit performs an ellipse with its apogee at almost 6,000 and its perigee at some 950 kilometers altitude above the Earth. Though no longer functional, as of now the 34.5 inch-long and 170-pounds satellite is still in orbit – see http://www.n2yo.com/?s=340! The five-man band by dint of ‘Telstar’ became the first British group scoring a #1 hit in the United States – depending upon your view, in a sense either cutting off the path of or paving the way for those far more famous British music invaders soon to follow: the Beatles. At least some forty other artists – including the likes of the Eagles, Laika and the Cosmonauts, Monsters from Mars, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and the Shadows – were to produce covers of the track, which remains The Tornados’ largest chart success.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

30. Moon Over Bourbon Street by Sting

30. Moon Over Bourbon Street (Sting) – Sting (4:00)
From the album ‘The Dream Of The Blue Turtles’ (1985)
YouTube
39 Points
Bourbon Street is a famous street in the old French Quarter of New Orleans, referring to the Royal House of the Bourbon Kings ruling over France 1589–1792 and 1814–1830 – but as heart of the New Orleans nightlife presumably nowadays more often associated with the whiskey of that name. In law, the street also plays a role, as historically noise violations (which in this particular context often might well have had something to do with whiskey) were the legal responsibility of the person making the noise, but a 1996 Yokum v. 615 Bourbon Street decision changed that to become the responsibility of the relevant property owner. A 2010 city ordinance then proclaimed music in the French Quarter – famous for its spontaneous street performances and musically adorned parades, including most notoriously Mardi Gras – illegal between 8 pm and 9 am, which however was not very strictly enforced (and by some even stated to be unconstitutional). No doubt, a Moon over Bourbon Street, the heart of a city famous for its haunted houses and ghostly traditions, was more appealing to Sting than anywhere else to sing about someone with the “face of a sinner but the hands of a priest”.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

31. Gravity by Sara Bareilles

31. Gravity (S. Bareilles) – Sara Bareilles (3:47)
From the album ‘Little Voice’ (2009)
38 Points
Sara Bareilles, a singer/songwriter from California, in this song uses ‘gravity’ as a metaphor for ‘personal attraction’, in this case to a former lover keeping the singer “down”: “you hold me without touch / you keep me without chains”, but “I don’t want to fall another moment into your gravity”. ‘Gravity’ in physics is a force of attraction between physical bodies commensurate to their respective masses (for the scientifically oriented: the force equals the gravity constant times the mass of the one body multiplied by the mass of the other divided by the square of the distance between the centers of the two masses). Bareilles took the analogue somewhat further than mere textual references, using a video clip to support the track which (sort of) references the famous short film ‘Powers Of Ten’ by including a short procession of various celestial bodies starting with the Earth and later followed by a series of lights symbolizing deeper space. The “melodic, introspective ballad”, written by Bareilles in reaction to her “first real heartbreak”, was considered by some to be her finest moment so far.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

32. See The Sun by Dido

32. See The Sun (D. Armstrong) – Dido (5:05)
From the album ‘Life For Rent’ (2003)
YouTube
37 Points
‘See The Sun’ in this case is almost an order: “I’m coming round to open up the blinds / you can’t hide there any longer”, and “you’ll see the sun again”. The Sun, here, is the harbinger of hope, light in the darkness – see it, and you’ll live again. The Sun’s heat is what allows it to enlighten and warm us on Earth even from a mean distance of some 150 million kilometers. ‘Dido’, singing about seeing the Sun, is short for Dido Florian Cloud de Bounevialle O’Malley Armstrong – no wonder she preferred to call herself ‘Dido’. She nevertheless was a namesake, as far as that very last part is concerned, but no family of the First Man on the Moon. Neil Armstrong, born in 1930, passed away in 2012, some 43 years after landing his Eagle in the Sea of Tranquility and making the most famous single step in all of mankind’s history. Dido, by contrast, studied law at the University of London, but never completed the degree and instead became a full-time musician – to great acclaim and success: ‘Life For Rent’ became one of the Top 10 bestselling albums in the United Kingdom in the 2000s.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

33. Brain Damage by Pink Floyd

33. Brain Damage (R. Waters) – Pink Floyd (3:50)
From the album ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’ (1973)
YouTube
36 Points
The song, which makes various veiled references to the early phase of Pink Floyd’s own history, famously includes the line “I’ll see you on the dark side of the moon” and thus is often (erroneously) labeled as ‘The Dark Side Of The Moon’, which actually is the title of the legendary album – one of the best-selling of all times, it remained an unprecedented fifteen-plus years (yes, years) on the US Billboard Top 100 and sold some 50 million copies worldwide (and counting). The phrase was actually meant as a metaphor for ‘death’, the meeting ‘on the dark side of the moon’ thus essentially a reference to human mortality. At the same time, ironically many of the dozen astronauts which by then had actually set foot on the Moon were having to face the aftermath, a ‘dark side’ to that adventure, such as downright depression – what else has life left to offer, after you have actually set foot on another world? Even more ironically, Pink Floyd itself was to suffer similar experiences – after making one of the best-selling albums of all times, what is left to aspire to for any rock band?
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

34.Space Junk by Devo

34. Space Junk (Devo) – Devo (3:38)
From the album ‘Q: Are we Not Men? A; We Are DEVO!’ (1978)
YouTube
36 Points
The US band Devo, generally classified as a new wave/punk band, in ‘Space Junk’ describes how Sally was walking down the alley when she was hit by – of all impossible things – ‘space junk’. Most poignantly so, before the singer could touch her… Thus, in his agony he proceeds to recite various references to space junk falling down all over the planet (New York, Miami Beach, Cuba, Angola, Saudi Arabia, Africa, India, Venezuela, Texas, Kansas, Peru) – and “It keeps coming!”, with a distorted voice in the background. The song’s title was taken from a 1975 headline in The Akron Beacon Journal – Akron, Ohio, being the town where Devo originated. In 1965, The Akron Beacon Journal had actually reported on a UFO supposedly hovering, then landing in a small town called Shalersville, not too far from Kent State University, which is where two of the band’s key members attended art school in the early 1970s. Devo, in their repertoire, show considerable interest in future-oriented themes – the band’s name itself actually derived from ‘de-volution’, a pseudo-scientific theory expounded by Oscar Kiss Maerth’s ‘The Beginning Was The End’.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

35. Star Wars Theme Song by John Williams

35. Star Wars Theme Song (J. Williams) – John Williams (3:38)
From the Movie ‘Star Wars’ (1977)
YouTube
36 Points
John Williams, who scored all ‘Star Wars’ soundtracks, composed this monumental musical entry to each episode in truly Wagnerian style – other classical reference points being Korngold’s opening theme for the ‘Kings Row’ movie and Puccini’s ‘Manon Lescaut’ opera. The theme is generally associated with Luke Skywalker, or more generally with heroism and adventure – not least because of Williams himself alluding to those. Supposedly, the theme musically represents an archetypal five-step story line in achieving ‘heroism’: (1) kicking off and reaching upward, (2) gathering strength for another try, (3) attainment of the goal, (4) reassurance of the actual achievement, and (5) full-fledged completion of the task. The theme certainly helped in elevating the ‘Star Wars’ saga to become one of the most successful epic movie series: its seven proper episodes grossed an estimated US$ 6 billion world-wide (roughly equal to that of the three-episode ‘Lord Of The Rings’ series jointly with the three-episode ‘The Hobbit’ series). Episode VII, the most recent individual movie in the series, was only surpassed in world-wide box office revenues by ‘Avatar’ and ‘Titanic’.
Frans von der Dunk, Leiden, June 2016

36. The Imperial March by John Williams

36. The Imperial March (J. Williams) – John Williams (3:06)
From the album ‘Star Wars’ (1980)
YouTube
36 Points
‘The Imperial March’, Williams’ second signature tune from the epic science fiction saga ‘Star Wars’ in the Fabulous Forty, was composed for ‘Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back’. As it is being played when Darth Vader appears on the screen, it is also often nicknamed ‘Darth Vader’s Theme’. Due to its martial, strident and menacing nature it has often served at sporting events. The first such use was in the 1980s, when the Georgetown Hoyas men’s basketball team was thereby introduced on the floor. At the 2003 Super Bowl, it was used to refer to the Oakland Raiders – although it did not keep them from being trounced by their opponents, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Darts hero John Part and the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens have used it to refer to themselves, the Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Clippers, Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Yankees at various occasions to refer to their opponents. Most on topic, however, surely was the use by a Scottish pro-independence campaigner playing the music to greet anti-independence politicians and announcing to the on-looking Glaswegians: “Your Imperial Masters have arrived. Bow down before your Imperial Masters!”.
Frans von der Dunk, Leiden, June 2016

37. Satellite by Rise Against

37. Satellite (T. McIlrath) – Rise Against (3:58)
From the album ‘Endgame’ (2011)
YouTube
36 Points
The US four-man outfit which produced this particular track is normally labeled a punk band, but ‘Satellite’ is not just a very energetic but also a rather melodic track. “I’m passing over you like a satellite / so catch me if I fall”: true to their name, Rise Against invites the audience not to stay placid – to politics, the American Dream, fate – even if it may hurt or backfire. The term ‘satellite’ originally referred to any object in outer space orbiting another (bigger) object – the Moon habitually is referred to as ‘the Earth’s satellite’ – but more or less since the beginning of the Space Age in 1957 has started to refer more exclusively to man-made (‘artificial’) satellites. Of those, as of now an estimated 6,600 have been launched; about 1,000 of them are (still) operational (some 500 in low-earth orbits, some 50 in medium-earth-orbits and some 450 in geostationary orbit) while the rest essentially now qualifies as ‘space debris’ or ‘space junk’. ‘Space debris’ thereby has become one of the most vexing problems of today’s space endeavor; there is certainly no reason whatsoever to remain placid here – or as Rise Against reminds us: “we won’t back down”.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

38. Last Man in Space by Violet Sedan Chair

38. Last Man In Space (???) – Violet Sedan Chair (3:56)
From the album ‘Seven Suns’ (2009)
‘Last Man In Space’ elaborates one of the most frequent and frightening themes used in the catalogue of musical references to outer space: the fear of being lost within its terrifyingly immense dimensions. The band Violet Sedan Chair came into existence basically as a ‘faux band’ used for the television series ‘Fringe’, kicking off in 2008. In a 2011 episode called ‘The Firefly’ one of the main characters meets his musical hero face-to-face: retired rock keyboardist Roscoe Joyce, played by Christopher Lloyd, from the purported 70s band Violet Sedan Chair. The producers then turned out to have actually created the ‘Sevens Suns’ album as a supporting gimmick already back in 2009. The songs are apparently available on vinyl but also on YouTube; ‘Last Man In Space’ is the last-but-two song on the album. Rife of references to space – “little lost world / final mission / eighteen light years”; and that’s just the start – the lonesome singer left his “only world” including everyone else behind and soon “will pull the trigger / on this final payload”,  not wishing to remain “the last man in space” for very long.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014

39. Moondance by Van Morrison

39. Moondance (V. Morrison) – Van Morrison (4:40)
From the album ‘Moondance’ (1970)
34 Points
YouTube
Van Morrison had dabbled with outer space before: the album preceding the one which gave ‘Moondance’ to the world was called ‘Astral Weeks’, a concept album not generating too much positive impact however – at least originally. So the song ‘Moondance’ followed, with the Moon, again, as a symbol of romance: against a background of “the stars up above” and “October skies” Van Morrison easily rhymes ‘moondance’ with the ‘romance’ he wants with his lady. ‘Moondance’ only appeared as a single seven years after its original release on the album also entitled ‘Moondance’; it did not reach above #92 in the Billboard Hot 100 then – yet made it to #226 on The Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list in 2004. A rather jazzy number by the Northern-Irish singer-songwriter, it remains his most frequently played song in concert, being so offered at least a thousand times by now. The song has frequently been covered by others, and also has featured in movies and TV shows, such as ‘An American Werewolf In London’, ‘August Rush’, the UK ‘Peep Show’ and the US series ‘West Wing’.
Frans von der Dunk, June 2016’.
Frans von der Dunk, Leiden, July 2016

40. Jupiter by Earth, Wind & Fire

40. Jupiter (Earth, Wind & Fire) – Earth, Wind & Fire (3:11)
From the album ‘All 'N All’ (1977)
34 Points
YouTube
The lyrics of this song from one of the most famous funk bands roaming Earth in the 1970s personalize the largest planet of our solar system surprising the singer – who was actually looking for the Moon – with a visit: “there stood a man with age and mystery / his name was Jupiter and came to visit me / the name is Jupiter, from the galaxy”. The message is love and freedom, with the help of “a flower from / a distant planet from where I come”. Even more straightforward metaphors are used in the band’s other hit referencing outer space, ‘Shining Stars’ (which made it into the Grammy Hall of Fame): “you're a shining star, no matter who you are / shining bright to see, what you can truly be”. That, however, should be no surprise, with a band named ‘Earth, Wind & Fire’; the astrological sign of Maurice White, the band’s founder referenced ‘earth’, ‘wind’ and ‘fire’, with only the traditional fourth element of ‘water’ missing. Ironically, therefore, the Jupiter orbiting the Sun at an average distance of over 750 million kilometers is primarily composed of hydrogen – the main chemical element in water as we know it.
Frans von der Dunk, Lincoln NE, August 2014