Ground control to space and YouTube fans everywhere: Put your headphones back on. Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield's poignant in-orbit edition of David Bowie's classic "Space Oddity" is back on YouTube.
Six months ago, Hadfield was forced to pull his rendition from YouTube when his one-year agreement with Bowie expired. The clip shows him floating on the International Space Station, playing guitar and singing the 1969 hit.
By the time it was pulled down, Hadfield's rendition of Space Oddity had amassed more than 23 million views. But now, in a post announcing the video's return, he wrote that he created the cover in part to show where we stand in terms of space exploration.
"Sometimes, as in the case of Oddity, it has let us see our ideas and creations, ourselves, in a new light," Hadfield wrote. "I had hoped to be able to capture the feeling of this one small step for humanity, and share it with you all."
Hadfield explained that he worked with David Bowie, his publisher and the Canadian Space Agency to make the original posting possible. When the video was pulled on May 13, they "started to work again to get permission to get it re-posted," Hadfield wrote. Bowie posted the video to his Facebook fan page in May 2013 and noted that the cover was "quite possibly the most poignant version of the song ever created."
Hadfield also wrote that it's complicated to obtain the rights for music that was performed aboard a space station as it flies over various countries: "The Space Station was built by 15 countries, and depending on where I floated while singing and playing, whose copyright laws applied? Which Space Agency owned the recording? Whose jurisdiction was I in?"
With these complexities in mind, Hadfield reached out to Bowie's publisher and hired a legal team from orbit. Together, they were able to renew the deal for another two years, due in large part to Bowie's glowing reaction to the cover. Hadfield added that the legal process to renew the posting was relatively straightforward.
"We’re proud to have helped bring Bowie’s genius from 1969 into space itself in 2013, and now ever-forward."
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