Major Tom (Coming Home)

"Major Tom (Coming Home)"
Single by Peter Schilling
from the album Error in the System
B-side	"Völlig Losgelöst" (NA) "The Noah Plan" (UK)
Released	24 March 1983
Recorded	1983[discuss]
Genre	New wave[1]
Length	4:33 (German edit) 5:00 (English version) 8:02 (extended version)
Label	Elektra WEA Records
Songwriter(s)	Peter Schilling
Producer(s)	Armin Sabol Peter Schilling
Peter Schilling singles chronology
"Fehler Im System" (1982) "Major Tom (Coming Home)" (1983) "Terra Titanic" (1984)

"Major Tom (Coming Home)" (German: Major Tom [völlig losgelöst], 'Major Tom [completely detached]') is a new wave song written and sung by German musician Peter Schilling that was first released as a single from his album Error in the System. Featuring the story of a character unofficially related to "Major Tom", an astronaut depicted in British musician David Bowie's 1969 song "Space Oddity" and other releases, Schilling's track describes a protagonist who leaves Earth and begins drifting out into outer space as radio contact breaks off with his ground control team.

In terms of specific lyrics, the song describes a calm, reflective astronaut detached from the psychological stress of his colleagues, who spend a significant amount of time engaging in certain scientific experiments of which he feels uncertain about. An emotional insight breaks through his senses while he happily experiences weightlessness and meets his ambiguous, unclear fate after losing contact with other human beings. One specific line describes Major Tom as realizing that "mich führt hier ein Licht durch das All" or "a light now guides me through space".^[2]

The song is one of multiple singles by various artists with a pop music related style influenced by the cultural "roboticism" associated with Berlin, Germany.^[3] It is specifically a part of the "Neue Deutsche Welle" (NDW), a social movement in the arts within German society, and is one of its pieces that crossed over into the popular culture of other nations. Versions in both the English language and in Schilling's native German have earned critical and commercial acclaim over multiple decades.