Friday Night Video Update: More Major Tom

It looks like I missed an entry in the Major Tom saga. This song is a 2009 cover of Peter Schilling's Major Tom (Coming Home), which itself was an update of David Bowie's 1972 Space Oddity, which was a re-recording of his original 1969 novelty song. This cover is by an Oklahoma band called Shiny Toy Guns and is probably recognizable to most as the music in a recent Lincoln MKZ commercial.

That about says it all. A song that started life as a Kubrick- and Apollo-inspired fantasy soon became an androgynous coming-out parable, eventually morphed into a New Wave, synthipop dance number and finally went on to sell Lincolns to baby boomers. Where do you go from there?

This is a fan-created video and the creator (Buck Productions) did a pretty god job. I do have one minor complaint, however: near the end, the on-screen lyrics state that Major Tom sees that "now the life commands 'This is my home.'" I always thought the lyric was "now the light commands, " which makes more sense in a "go towards the light" kind of way.