“Starman” by David Bowie

"Starman" was the lead single from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, David Bowie's fifth studio album, released on RCA in 1972, and it almost didn't make the record. RCA wanted a single, so Bowie wrote one on demand, and it bumped a Chuck Berry cover, "Round and Round", off the album. He cut it on 4 February 1972 at Trident Studios in London, co-producing with Ken Scott, with the Spiders from Mars behind him: Mick Ronson on electric and acoustic guitars and piano, Trevor Bolder on bass and Mick Woodmansey on drums. Bowie played 12-string guitar and clapped along himself, and he and Ronson worked out the arrangement together.

The story is pure Ziggy: an alien starman reaching the kids of Earth through their radios with a message of hope. The chorus swoops up like Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow", and there's a whiff of T. Rex and the Supremes in its glittering bounce.

Then came the Top of the Pops performance, and everything changed. The song climbed to number 10 in the UK and pushed the album up to number five, Bowie's first major hit since "Space Oddity" three years before. The broadcast turned him into a star, and plenty of the kids watching went on to make music of their own, among them Siouxsie Sioux, Bono, Robert Smith, Boy George and Morrissey. Critics now rank it among his finest songs.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.