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Watch The Flaming Lips Cover David Bowie's 'Space Oddity'

The Flaming Lips - Space Oddity
The Flaming Lips - Space OddityYouTube screengrab

by Jackson Sinnenberg

April 14, 2016

Tributes continue to pour out for David Bowie after his passing in January. The latest, and one of the most touching, comes courtesy of The Flaming Lips, whose cover of "Space Oddity" shows up in this new video, a couple of weeks after the band played "Life on Mars?" at a pair of tribute concerts to Bowie in New York. In the hands of the Lips, Bowie's ode to space exploration is transformed into a beat-driven, psychedelic eulogy to the Thin White Duke.

Both the song and the video contain moments of joy alongside moments of mourning. The camera opens on two women dressed as nuns walking through a graveyard to the song's opening vamp. They sit and weep at the steps of a mausoleum. The video then cuts to the main setting: a church where The Flaming Lips perform before pews filled with white balloons. The service becomes more like a Flaming Lips show at the end of the first verse when a droning, electronic beat and full laser show kick in.

"Space Oddity" by the Flaming Lips is out now as a single. You can get a digital copy via Amazon and iTunes.