Leftover from my collection of Spacemen and Spacewomen Songs, I realised I had enough tracks to make an Astronauts' Top Ten too. And I think it's gonna be a long, long list...
(Sadly no Sleeper in this list, but their debut album cover seemed appropriate.)
10. Clint Boon Experience - Andy Gill Astronaut / Tiger Woods Astronaut
I couldn't find either of the above tracks from Clint Boon's seminal 1999 album The Compact Guide to Pop Music & Space Travel anywhere on youtube, but I did find this, an alternate version with Phillip Glass as its inspiration.
9. Cloud Atlas - Even Astronauts
A Welsh band named after David Mitchell's insanely enjoyable novel (soon to be desecrated at a cinema near you with Tom Hanks... presumably he'll play one of the clouds... or an atlas... or a plank). Cloud Atlas have a chunky indie guitar sound and interesting lyrics. Sadly, it looks like they gave up the fight a couple of years back. Unless you know differently... (I've stopped saying bands have split up because someone always ends up telling me they recently got back together.)
8. Guns 'n' Roses - Rocket Queen
A song about a girl Axl knew who was going to call her band Rocket Queen (and therefore nothing to do with actual astronauts), this sneaks into the Top Ten by being from the very best GNR album and rocking like a chair.
7. Suede - Astrogirl
Because it's high time we had some Brett Anderson in one of these top tens. Even a track from the least popular Suede album is better than nothing.
6. Amanda Palmer - Astronaut
This, on the other hand, is one of many stand out tracks from the very best Amanda Palmer album (thus far - there's a new one promised later this year from the prolific Mrs. Gaiman), Who Killed Amanda Palmer. Also, if you're looking for a rhyme with 'astronaut', 'after-thought' takes some beating...
5. Frigid Vinegar - Dogmonaut 2000 (Is There Anyone Out There?)
A lost classic from the 90s about a YTS Jedi who steals the wheels off abandoned spaceships. You can't make it up.
4. The National - Looking For Astronauts
The National are a great example of a band whose lyrics sound like they mean a lot more than they actually do. That's not a bad thing. Not always, anyway.
3. Riff Raff - I Wanna Be A Cosmonaut
Before he was Billy Bragg, he was just one half of Riff Raff (with Wiggy). They made a delightful punk noise... but his best tunes lay ahead of him.
2. The Divine Comedy - Laika's Theme / Absent Friends
Laika, if you're scratching your head, was a pioneering astronaut: the first dog to successfully orbit the earth. Sadly, she died up there, but Neil Hannon paid eulogy to her twice on the album Absent Friends, firstly on the instrumental theme named after her, and secondly in the title track...
Laika flew through inky blue
'Til Laika neared the atmosphere
And Laika knew
Laika's life was through.
Here's to absent friends...
1. Elton John - Rocket Man
I'm surprised nobody's asked me about the absence of this track from previous lists - it could easily have fit the Spacemen, Countdown, Spaceship or Mars Top Tens ("Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids," after all). I've been saving it up, because whatever you might think of Elton's crimes against sanity in recent times... there's no denying this is a stone cold John/Taupin classic.
"I'm not the man they think I am at home..."
Indeed.
Those were my favourite astronaut songs... but which one gets you high as a kite?
