Spaceman (Babylon Zoo song)



"Spaceman" is a song by British band Babylon Zoo. It was released in January 1996 as the lead single from their debut album The Boy with the X-Ray Eyes. Featuring heavily distorted guitars and metallic, robotic sounding vocals, it went straight to Number 1 on the UK Singles Chart on 21 January 1996, after being featured in a popular Levi's jeans advertisement in December 1995, and became the fastest selling single in the United Kingdom in over thirty years, since The Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love".

"Spaceman" was the seventh song to reach number one in the UK after being featured in an advert for Levi's.

Song history
Promotional copies of "Spaceman" had been distributed, and the Arthur Baker remix was chosen to tie in with the release on 1 December 1995, of a new United Kingdom Levi's advertisement titled "Planet", which was directed by Vaughan Arnell and Anthea Benton. The advertisement concentrated on Baker's speeded-up vocal section at the beginning and end of the song.

The initial intro to "Spaceman" on the promotional copies, before it was used for the advert, featured Mann's whispering vocals of "I killed your mother, I killed your sister, I killed you all." These lyrics were later taken out of the song and replaced with the more radio friendly Arthur Baker introduction; although, the "I killed you all" lyric is still buried in there. There was a lower budget video made for this version.

In 2006, "Spaceman" featured on trailers for Ant and Dec's film Alien Autopsy, the BBC's children's channel, CBeebies for the animated preschool series Lunar Jim, and Network Ten's advertisement for Battlestar Galactica. "Spaceman" is also used in Eesti otsib superstaari (Pop Idol Estonia). "Spaceman" is also featured in E4's My Mad Fat Diary, in the episode "Ladies and Gentlemen", during the scene where Rae and Finn begin their drive to Knebworth.

Critical reception
Writing in Select, Ian Harrison described the song as a "bin-lid dancey metal effort with a weakness for vintage Bowie-isms (done like Bauhaus with synths) and a suspected humour deficiency". Conversely, Chuck Eddy at Entertainment Weekly described the song's "futuristic kitsch" as "both funny and seductive."

Retrospectively, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic called the song a "bizarre, tuneless collage of hip-hop rhythms, techno keyboards and alternative guitars", that despite sounding distinctive, lacks "any tangible hook to make it memorable". A Scotsman journalist wrote that the Arthur Baker remix, which brought the track to public attention through its use in a Levi's commercial, was "much more fun to listen to than the dirgey original". Writer Tim Moore attributed the "rambling, dirge-like" song's success to the Baker remix and Levi's advert exposure, and wrote that "only failure and embarrassment" followed.

MTV UK ranked "Spaceman" as the #24 single of the 1990s. "Spaceman" was voted number 31 in a 2006 Channel 4 poll of the 50 best songs by one-hit wonders.

Commercial performance
The single charted at No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart, selling 420,000 copies in its first week. It became the fastest selling single in the United Kingdom in over thirty years, since The Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love". "Spaceman" became a number one chart hit in 23 countries, including the United Kingdom. As of November 2012, "Spaceman" was the 74th best selling single in the history of the United Kingdom, selling 1.14 million copies.

Cover versions

 * Katie Melua has performed an acoustic version of this song live.
 * Metal band The Kovenant covered this song in their album Animatronic.
 * Cinema Bizarre covered this song both live and in a studio recorded track.
 * DJ Kambel and MC Magika remixed and covered this song as Dream State (Spaceman) in the 2001 eurodance compilation Dancemania Speed 7.
 * Romanian metalcore band Goodbye to Gravity recorded a cover of the song in 2015, originally intended for their album Mantras of War, although it was later removed. After the Colectiv nightclub fire killed four of the five band members, the cover version was included on the tribute album Back to Life – A Tribute to Goodbye to Gravity.

Track listing

 * CD Promo Single 1995 WEA (YZ925CDDJ)
 * 1) "Spaceman" (radio version) — 3:50
 * 2) "Spaceman" (Arthur meets the spaceman) — 5:56


 * CD Promo 1995 EMI (CDEMDJ 416)
 * 1) "Spaceman" (zupervarian mix) - 3:50


 * 7" Single
 * 1) "Spaceman" (zupervarian mix) - 3:50
 * 2) "Spaceman" (the 5th dimension) — 5:09


 * CD Single 1996 EMI (CDEM 416)
 * 1) "Spaceman" (zupervarian mix) — 3:50
 * 2) "Metal Vision" — 3:48
 * 3) "Blue Nude" — 2:09
 * 4) "Spaceman" (the 5th dimension) — 5:09


 * CD Single ('The Only Original Remixes') 1996 EMI (7243 8 82721 2 4)
 * 1) "Spaceman" (zupervarian mix) — 3:50
 * 2) "Spaceman" (the 5th dimension) — 5:09
 * 3) "Spaceman" (Arthur meets the spaceman) — 5:56
 * 4) "Spaceman" (E before I) — 6:37