No, it wasn’t Bowie’s ‘Space Oddity‘ playing over the Invasion end credits this week
While you are probably familiar with the now-iconic David Bowie song ‘Space Oddity‘, you may have thought the version playing over the Season 2 finale of Invasion end credits this week — Invasion, Season 2, Episode 10, “Old Friends, New Frontiers” — sounded a little different.
That is because the version of ‘Space Oddity‘ licensed for play on Invasion was not performed by Bowie, but was a cover song released by British indie folk singer songwriter Passenger.
It is a stand-alone guitar-driven cover that, to me, is much sweeter but much more devastating than the original Bowie version, primarily due to that gorgeously sad timber in Passenger‘s voice.
When did Passenger record and release ‘Space Oddity‘ and why?
The British singer recorded and released the classic pop track on 13th January, 2016, just three days after David Bowie himself died from liver cancer.
In a message on the YouTube video for the track, Passenger explained why he strongly felt the need to mark Bowie’s passing:
hello everyone ,
we, like the rest of the world are completely devastated by the loss of david bowie . im not going to say too much about it as i know there has been a lot written over the last few days and i wouldn’t really know where to start .
instead we recorded this cover of one of my all time favourite songs …. i remember hearing this as a kid and it feeling truly magical to me . i think thats probably what david bowie gave to everyone at one point or another.
The simple official black and white music video of the song, simply featuring Passenger in a recording studio with a handful of musicians, came out at the same time.
Passenger also released the song on his Sunday Night Sessions album of cover songs in July, 2017.
An album that included Passenger’s interpretation of 11 other classic tracks.
Listen to Passenger’s ‘Space Oddity’ (cover) in the song’s official music video, and on his Sunday Night Sessions album via Spotify.
Invasion itself ended its second season yesterday, leaving fans now fingers crossed that Season 3 will be announced soon.