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| | For subscribers | July 29, 2025 | | 
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Space out with 11 far-out songs
11 songs, 48 min 13 sec
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| Björk (who else?). Santiago Felipe/Getty Images for ABA |
Dear listeners,
Outer space is my Roman Empire: I am on some level obsessing about it whenever I have a free moment. I will devour true stories of discovery and space travel or mind-bending concoctions of science fiction — I'm here to be fascinated, thrilled and terrified by it all.
So when researchers recently suggested that the Earth may actually be trapped in a giant cosmic void, my thoughts, more intensely than usual, drifted to our odd little marble's place in the vast expanse of the universe.
In fact, it was on this very day 67 years ago that NASA was founded, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958. So there's no better time than now for a playlist about the great unknown that surrounds us.
Let's rock out on this rock together, shall we?
Maya
1. Pink Floyd: "Astronomy Domine"
The first song on Pink Floyd's first album, "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" (1967), opens with the voice of Peter Jenner, the band's manager, reading out names of the moons of Uranus and a handful of planets through a megaphone, almost mimicking the effect of an interplanetary transmission. "Pluto was not discovered till 1930," you can hear him say if you listen closely. Pink Floyd would of course go on to become beloved for its music's ability to transport the psyche to astral planes. For something more familiar that's still on topic, try most any track off "The Dark Side of the Moon."
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Kate Bush: "Hello Earth"
Like "Astronomy Domine," this track from Kate Bush's 1985 album, "Hounds of Love," opens with an crackly missive, this time a comms recording from the Columbia Shuttle: "Columbia now nine times the speed of sound," it starts. Before long, Bush breaks in with her signature otherworldly, soul-awakening vocals that lead to a meditative Georgian chant performed by the Richard Hickox Singers. "In some ways, I thought of it as a lullaby for the Earth," Bush has said. "It was the idea of turning the whole thing upside down and looking at it from completely above."
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. David Bowie: "Space Oddity"
Practically any song from David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust era would be at home on this list. (He embodied a rock star who communicates with extraterrestrial beings in the face of a coming apocalypse on Earth.) But it's this earlier track — from the 1969 album that later became known as "Space Oddity" — about a fictional astronaut named Major Tom who loses contact with ground control, that gets me every time. Bowie was in part inspired to write it after watching Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," one of my favorite films. The track was also intentionally released on July 11, 1969, to dovetail with real life: The Apollo 11 mission, which would culminate with humans setting foot on the moon for the first time, launched just days later.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Björk: "Cosmogony"
Björk has never seemed to be from this planet, and I mean that as the highest compliment. Virtually all her songs sound like an interstellar broadcast. This one off "Biophilia" from 2011 opens and closes with a trippy sound comparable to the unsettling requiem motif in "2001: A Space Odyssey." In between is a surprisingly tender ode to the creation of the universe. Interestingly, her lyrics here are more immediately legible than in much of her work. "Heaven's bodies, whirl around me, make me wonder," she sings. "And they say back then our universe wasn't even there, until a sudden bang."
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Sufjan Stevens: "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois"
Even time I hear this gorgeous, delicate song by the indie-rock singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens from his 2005 LP "Illinois," I so wish its two minutes were just the start of a much longer musical experience. Punctuated with lilting flute, it reflects on a true story from 2000, in which police officers and others reported seeing lights in triangular formation around 4 a.m. near Highland, Ill.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. Elton John: "I've Seen the Saucers"
Elton John's hit "Rocket Man," about the fragmented life of an astronaut, is a natural fit for this list, but this 1974 track off the less-celebrated album "Caribou" is a bop that tells a tale of alien abduction while exploring earthbound feelings of alienation. It also celebrates John's emotive, rock-soul voice at its peak. Like "Rocket Man," it was inspired by his songwriting partner Bernie Taupin's love of science fiction.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Soundgarden: "Black Hole Sun"
When I was a teenager in the 1990s, I had a "Soundgarden" baby tee that I wore until it was threadbare. I kind of wish I'd framed it because it represents the beginning of my interest in (and my fear of) our place in the cosmos, in no small part because of the song and video for "Black Hole Sun," off the band's 1994 grunge classic, "Superunknown." The video, which shows delusionally happy suburbanites whose grins get creepily distorted as a black hole comes to swallow up humanity, was like nothing I'd ever seen. It's a psychedelic image that, for better or worse, shaped me.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Parliament: "Unfunky UFO"
If you are here for the intergalactic theme, but some of the songs above are too melancholy, take a sharp turn toward the funky with the entirety of Parliament's 1975 album, "Mothership Connection." The flying-saucer cover art alone is worth the cost of admission. This track about desperate funk-less alien beings wanting to save their dying world by siphoning off the band's superpower is undeniably danceable. "Like a streak of lightning it came, filling my brain with pain," the lyrics go. "Without saying a word, this voice I heard, 'Give up the funk, you punk.'"
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Beyoncé: "Alien Superstar"
This song is not about literal aliens, but the vibe is supernatural in the most fabulous of ways. From Beyoncé's 2022 studio album, "Renaissance" — "a dazzling nightclub fantasia," as our pop music critic Lindsay Zoladz put it — this funky, synthy, layered track explores themes of Afrofuturism and queer liberation, and is simply out of this world.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
10. Levi Stubbs: "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space"
If you ever get the chance to watch the 1986 horror-comedy musical "Little Shop of Horrors" with me, skip it. I know every word to the entire film, about a sentient alien plant hungry for human blood, and I don't restrain myself. This theatrical funk-rock track — written by the musical's creators, Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, and sung by Levi Stubb, the voice of Audrey II in the movie — accompanies the film's climatic scene, a fever-dream battle between man and extraterrestrial. It also earned an Oscar nomination for best original song, one of only a few songs sung by a movie's villain to do so, with profanity no less.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
11. Frank Sinatra: "Fly Me to the Moon"
Originally recorded in 1954 by Kaye Ballard as "In Other Words," it was Frank Sinatra's 1964 interpretation that quickly became an anthem of sorts for the NASA Apollo moon missions, which ran from 1961 to 1972. Legend has it that the song was played both during the Apollo 10 mission, which orbited the moon in 1969, and Apollo 11, before it landed on the moon, making Neil Armstrong the first human to walk on its surface. In 2012, at Armstrong's memorial service, the jazz singer Diana Krall performed a plaintive version of the song in a tear-jerking tribute.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
The Amplifier Playlist
"Space Out With 11 Far-Out Songs" track list
Track 1: Pink Floyd, "Astronomy Domine"
Track 2: Kate Bush, "Hello Earth"
Track 3: David Bowie, "Space Oddity"
Track 4: Björk, "Cosmogony"
Track 5: Sufjan Stevens, "Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois"
Track 6: Elton John, "I've Seen the Saucers"
Track 7: Soundgarden, "Black Hole Sun"
Track 8: Parliament, "Unfunky UFO"
Track 9: Beyoncé, "Alien Superstar"
Track 10: Levi Stubbs, "Mean Green Mother From Outer Space"
Track 11: Frank Sinatra, "Fly Me to the Moon"
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Have feedback? Ideas for a playlist? We'd love to hear from you. Email us at theamplifier@nytimes.com.
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