Fans who checked out the new trailer for Lucasfilm’s upcoming live-action Disney+ series Star Wars: Skeleton Crew this morning were in for a bit of a surprise: the two-minute video features the 1983 pop song “Major Tom” by German recording artist Peter Schilling. But beyond this selection obviously not being the usual musical fare for the Star Wars franchise, there’s something else noticeably off about this recording of the hit track. Let’s take a closer listen.
First, a little bit of history about “Major Tom”: this song is an unofficial sequel to David Bowie’s 1969 rock classic “Space Oddity,” the title and subject matter of which were inspired by Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterpiece film 2001: A Space Odyssey, which would later be cited by George Lucas as “the ultimate science-fiction movie.” Here Major Tom is the protagonist traveling on a voyage through outer space that goes horribly wrong, much like in the movie.
13 years later, “Major Tom” was first released by Peter Schilling as a pseudo-tribute to Bowie in the German language and (according to Wikipedia) the “roboticism” style popular in Berlin at the time, as heard in the 1982 music video embedded below. A similar fate awaits Major Tom in this song as in “Space Oddity.”
The following year, an English-language version of Schilling’s song began tearing up the charts in Canada, South Africa, and the United States. A mash-up cover version of “Space Oddity” and “Major Tom” was then released by artist Jonathan King in 1984, reaching number 77 on the U.K. singles chart. Both songs were also covered by Star Trek star William Shatner on his 2011 space-themed album Seeking Major Tom.
And now we’ve got “Major Tom” in the Skeleton Crew trailer, but as eagle-eared viewers might have noticed, the lyrics here are not in either German or English. Instead of the countdown going “Four, three, two, one…” we get (according to the YouTube subtitles) “Fwanna, duba, dopa, bo…” and in lieu of “Earth below us, drifting, falling” there’s “Jee-jee At Attin, haspivaka.” There’s more where that came from, and long-time Star Wars fans will note the similarities between the words and pronunciations here to the fictional in-universe language of Huttese from A Galaxy Far, Far Away. Now, some might argue that– even in translation– Earthly 80s pop music doesn’t belong in the Star Wars galaxy, even in a trailer, but to me this is just a whole lot of fun (especially considering the 1980s cinematic influences on the Lucasfilm series)… and I kind of hope the full version of “Major Tom (Huttese Mix)” gets released via Spotify at some point, or maybe featured in the show’s end credits? For now I’ll have to cross my fingers and wait until Star Wars: Skeleton Crew comes to Disney+ next month.
Star Wars: Skeleton Crew will debut with a two-episode premiere on Tuesday, December 3rd, exclusively via Disney+.