Chris Hadfield
Space Oddity
2013
Song, guitar performance
n.a.
status:
Astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded a video of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" on the ISS. It was the first music video to be recorded in space.
In May 2013, Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, commander of Expedition 35 to the International Space Station (ISS), recorded a video of "Space Oddity" on the ISS that went viral and generated a great deal of media exposure. It was the first music video to be recorded in space. In the video, which was filmed at the end of Hadfield's time at the ISS, Hadfield sang and played guitar while on Earth, Joe Corcoran produced and mixed the backing track with a piano arrangement by multi-instrumentalist Emm Gryner, who worked with Bowie during his 1999–2000 concert tours. Gryner said she was "so proud to be a part of it".
The lyrics were somewhat altered; rather than losing communication with Ground Control and being lost in space as a result, Major Tom receives his orders to land and does so safely, reflecting Hadfield's imminent return from his final mission to the ISS. Hadfield announced the video on his Twitter account, writing: "With deference to the genius of David Bowie, here's Space Oddity, recorded on Station. A last glimpse of the World." Bowie is also thanked in the closing credits. Bowie's social media team responded to the video, tweeting back to Hadfield, "Hallo Spaceboy ...", and later called the cover "possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created".
Hadfield's performance was the subject of a piece by Glenn Fleishman in The Economist on 22 May 2013 analyzing the legal implications of publicly performing a copyrighted work of music while in Earth orbit. The song is the only one of Bowie's for which he did not own the copyright. Bowie's publisher granted Hadfield a one-year licence to the song. On 13 May 2014, when the one-year licence expired, the official video was taken offline despite Bowie's explicit wishes for the publisher to grant Hadfield a licence at no charge to record the song and produce the video. Following negotiations, the video was restored to YouTube on 2 November 2014 with a two-year licence agreement in place. According to Pegg, Hadfield's video is "Breathtakingly beautiful and extraordinarily moving, [and] offers a rare opportunity to deploy that overused adjective 'awesome' with complete justification".
Source: Wikipedia
Technical information
artist
Chris Hadfield
title
Space Oddity
date
2013
medium
Song, guitar performance
dimensions
n.a.
genre
Performance, Audio
IAAA art style
this work is part of the following collection
none
artwork COSPAR id
Launch
Space
Return
launch date
19 Dec 2012
launch mission
Soyouz TMA-07M, Expedition 35
launch provider
Glavkosmos
return date
return vehicle
return location
launch location
Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
host vehicle
International Space Station
return vehicle COSPAR id
launching state
location
Russian Federation
LEO, International Space Station (ISS)
host vehicle COSPAR id
1998-067A
status
Ended
launch vehicle COSPAR id
2012-074A
partners
Collection
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