This is Ground Control to Major Tom, You've really made the grade...
Neil McCormick has written a thoughtful piece in the Telegraph regarding Space Oddity, the song and the album. Here are a couple of lines from it...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The album he subsequently recorded may not have proved a major success, but it freed Bowie to confidently embrace new musical ideas rather than chase trends, essaying many of the themes he would explore in his stellar Seventies incarnations, along with a kind of cynical bewilderment at the fading of Sixties ideals.
Critics generally portray Bowie?s true career arc starting with 1970?s ?The Man Who Sold The World?, but re-released next week as an anniversary double CD edition with bonus tracks, demos and alternative versions, ?Space Oddity? (the album) is revealed not as a pallid foreshadowing of his genius, but an elegiac lost masterpiece.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can read the full thing