Once again, two non-Bowie songs, but the first one counts as Bowie because I’m also including Bowie’s cover of it:
30. Beatles, “Across the Universe” (1970):
Bowie’s 1975 cover version:
31. Bart Howard (author) and Kaye Ballard (vocals), “Fly Me to the Moon” [a.k.a. “In Other Words”] (1954):
While Kaye Ballard’s version of this song was the first one recorded, the best known version is of course Frank Sinatra’s from 1964:
“She was not like the other girls ….”
28. David Bowie, “Born in a UFO” (2013):
29. Ash, “Girl from Mars” (1977):
26. David Bowie, “Drive-In Saturday” (1973):
“Drive-In Saturday” imagines a post-apocalyptic future in which people must turn to old books and movies to remember how to have sex:
27. Eurythmics, “Sexcrime” (1984):
“Sexcrime” was written for, but not (or barely) used in, the 1984 film version of 1984; it refers to the ban, in Orwell’s dystopia, on all sexual activity for any purpose other than reproduction. Annie Lennox, as often, looks a bit like Bowie’s long-lost sibling:
The apocalypse has been scheduled:
24. David Bowie, “Five Years” (1972):
25. Prince, “1999” (1982):
22. David Bowie, “Hallo Spaceboy” (1995):
The original version of “Hallo Spaceboy” didn’t make any explicit reference to Major Tom, but this version, recorded with the Pet Shop Boys, does (their idea, not Bowie’s):
23. K.I.A. (featuring Larissa Gomes), “Mrs. Major Tom” (2002):
Yet another perspective on Major Tom:
Three songs today instead of two! Well, it’s hard to separate these three; and you know I’m not fanatical about rules. (As my friend Josef Šíma likes to say, “We are not Prussians.”)
Elton John’s song “Rocket Man” is well known (in fact an Elton John biopic with that title is in theatres now), but another, less famous “Rocket Man” song preceded it by two years:
19. Pearls Before Swine, “Rocket Man” (1970):
This “Rocket Man” song is heavily inspired by the Ray Bradbury story of the same name. As in the Bradbury story, this song’s rocket man is a kind of addict (like Major Tom), but addicted to outer space rather than to a drug:
20. Elton John, “Rocket Man” (1972):
Elton John’s “Rocket Man,” while echoing the Bradbury story and/or Pearls song to some extent, seems to owe more to Bowie’s “Space Oddity” than to Bradbury.
The line about being as “high as a kite” has also been read as yet another space-travel-or-drug-use ambiguity.
The 2017 music video, by Iranian dissident and refugee Majid Adin, adds yet another layer of meaning, by turning space flight into a metaphor for Adin’s own experience smuggling himself from Iran into London:
21. David Bowie, “Like a Rocket Man” (2013):
If “Ashes to Ashes” left it ambiguous whether space flight was being used as a metaphor for drug addiction or vice versa, there’s no such ambiguity here.
The title references Elton John’s “Rocket Man” obviously, and Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” a bit less obviously: