Major Tom (Coming Home)

The page for our upload, fetched from YouTube, showed the title "Major Tom (Coming Home)" by Peter Schilling, so this recording may be the original rather than The Space Lady's version. The song is Schilling's: he wrote and recorded it, first in German as "Major Tom (Völlig losgelöst)" in 1982 or 1983 (the dates conflict), with an English version released in the United States on September 24, 1983 as the lead single from Error in the System, produced by Armin Sabol and Schilling. It reached number one in West Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Canada, number 14 on the US Hot 100, number two on the US dance chart and number 42 in the United Kingdom. Jonathan King, William Shatner and Shiny Toy Guns are among those who covered it.

The Space Lady says Schilling's "Major Tom" is her signature song, and she busked echo-heavy versions of it in San Francisco in the 1980s and 1990s. It appears on her Greatest Hits, from 1990 recordings, and Vice calls her version a somber ode as opposed to the original's cathartic plea. Setlist.fm counts 14 performances out of 83 shows.