What’s Your Favorite Song About Outer Space?

Air’s tour celebrating the 25th anniversary of Moon Safari hit New York a few weeks ago, and I’m still pissed I missed it. Totally forgot, despite the fact that I considered flying to Europe to see the tour last year. Got distracted by launching a website. Now I’m torturing myself by listening to the French electronic duo’s dreamy debut on repeat. Which, of course, got me thinking about space songs.

Also, Elon Musk suddenly being a fixture in the American government makes me want to shoot myself to the moon in a cannon. It would also be tight to reclaim space from that breeder turd and his tight T-shirts. I’d say we can’t let him sully Mars’ good name any longer, but I think we have bigger problems to solve on this planet first. In the meantime, we can talk about “Life on Mars” or whatever while the absolute worst people on Earth accumulate more power.

That said, and with all due respect to David Bowie’s moon-man steez, I’d like to highlight some slightly lesser-known songs related to outer space. “Kelly Watch the Stars,” from Moon Safari, sounds like a pleasant sojourn across the galaxy, with soothing celestial sound effects that add a sense of mystery and a piano line that I could imagine underscoring the magnificent wonder of glimpsing Earth from the window of a rocketship.

Jonathan Richman’s extremely silly Modern Lovers cut “Here Come The Martian Martians” is the song I’d play if I were feeling paranoid about aliens getting onboard. The voice at the beginning of Spiritualized’s 1997 masterpiece, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, would be in my head the entire cosmic trip. I believe that’s the band’s keyboardist, Kate Radley, who says the title of the album in a cooler-than-cool British accent before Spiritualized’s soft and sublime psychedelia begins.

And if I needed a dance party while traversing the universe, I’d turn to vintage European disco, where “songs about intergalactic and/or robot love” might as well be their own subgenre. Try Chris Craft’s Discosmic Dance, a full album of impeccable instrumental space jams, and Milkways’ “Galactic Reaction,” which really does benefit from the performance below. Also, does this sound like a popular iPhone ringtone, or is that just me?