Now today, were gonna take a look at Babylon Zoo's 1996 blockbuster hit "Space Man".
Babylon Zoo was a British industrial/pop rock band of the mid 1990s from Wolverhampton, England, joining Wolverhampton's elite musicians such as... NO ONE. That town sucks. They were fronted by Jas Mann.
THAT's his name? Jas Mann? That's a real rockstar name. Jas Mann. And from the looks of it, he went home with tons of Manns after their shows.
"Spaceman" went straight to Number 1 on the UK singles chart selling 418,000 copies in the first week of release, a record at the time. It was their only hit. It was subsequently featured in an advert for Levi's Jeans, leading to even more sales
OK, if it sold so well, this must be the sickest song ever. But. There is a but. But, when you turn the song on, this is what you hear: A cacaphony of high pitched, high-technology crap which sounds like the opening of Rush's "Tom Sawyer"... On Steroids. Then, after about 20 seconds of this weird techno babble you hear... wait a second, is that Alvin and the fuckin chipmunks? no it can't be. It's Alvin and the Chipmunks singing about space. WHYYY!?
And then finally, after about ten seconds of Alvin's shrill-sounding sped-up vocal, the tempo is slowed down, to the actual SOUND of a fucking record getting slowed down. Finally, after all that has cleared, we finally, FINALLY, hear the sound of Mann's vocal singing the first verse in normal speed.
OK, if you're listening for the first time, this is your obvious question. WHY is there all this crap at the beginning? WHY can't they just go into the first verse right away, like in any other record.
Well they did, at first, but at the peak of the song's success a couple of remixes surfaced and blew up in dance clubs. One of them, the "Fifth Dimension Remix" is just a simple retooling of the song for a techno and trance audience. It has the same hypnotic drum and bass over and over again, on top of what sounds like an engine being revved up. OK, that makes sense, because as of 1996 techno and rave music was at its height of popularity in their native UK. The second was an "Alvinized" remix, which is my term for the entire song being sped up in tempo to resemble Alvin and the Chipmunks. Why this was popular, even in 96'? Who fucking knows.
So some nitwit named Arthur Baker at the record company got a brilliant idea: "Since the song is selling thousands of copies, and the remixes are blowing up at the clubs, then why don't we combine the remix with the actual song? Yay, more money for us!" So Baker made a version of the song which combined the two remixes at the beginning, before going into the first verse. And this is the only fucking version of "Spaceman" you can download today. And you wonder why the record business right now is in dire straits? Because of confused thinking like this.
So on to the verse. In a faux-David Bowie space warble, Mann spits science fiction bullshit, such as "Time to terminate the great white world/Beyond the black horizon/television takes control". You don't think 400,000 idiots bought this record in one week because of this intergalactic pigshit, do you?
After Mann warbles on about... whatever, finally roaring guitars replace the atmospheric emptiness of the verse section. Could this be the big chorus that we're all waiting for?
Nope, just a bridge section: " There's a fire between us, so where is your god?", followed by "I can't get off the carousel" Followed by... "I can't get off the carousel", followed by the same fucking line 2 more times. What does that even mean, "I can't get off the carousel"? And why does Mann consider that line so important that he has to repeat it 4 fucking times before moving on. After the first one I'm thinking of smashing my fucking computer if he doesn't get to the chorus already.
So after the broken record has been fixed, the roaring guitars turn into, more roaring guitars. Is THIS it?
Nope, just yet another bridge section, this one being about a "sickening taste" or some such bullshit, followed by "Beam me up so I can breeeeeattheeeee"
Thank God that 'Spaceman" is not a song that people sing along to at bars, because it's similar to one of those kinds of songs in structure. A song like "Sweet Caroline" or "Don't Stop Believing" which has like 5 sections that people sing along to before getting to the actual chorus, so you don't even know when the real chorus is.
But after "Breeatheee" , this is it! OK, we've sat through all this crap, all these bullshit lyrics, all these chorus teasers. So after all that, what is the fucking chorus? TADA! Here it is. Here is the million-dollar chorus:
"Spaceman. I always wanted you to go/ into Space, Man (Intergalactic Christ)"
That's it? That's IT? Are you fucking KIDDING me?
Apparently, after Babylon Zoo failed to write a follow-up hit Jas Mann quit music altogether, moved to India or something, and has lived off royalties from this song ever since.
Well let me tell you, if I ever wrote a record with a hook this stupid and anticlimactic and millions of people went out and bought it, you're damn right I would do the same fucking thing.
And the chorus doesn't even repeat itself like the damn Carousel line did. Just one chorus, and then the same roaring guitar section, and just some guy screaming. I don't know what the hell he's screaming, it's just shrill and annoying. The fact that they couldn't just do 2 choruses and had to put in this wordless, tasteless screaming, makes me wonder how it's possible all those idiots in the UK bought this.
So then, another warbling verse, more sci-fi psychobabble, then another bridge-carousel-bridge-chorus, and then... whistling. Just this weird whistling that sounds like it came out of a Disney cartoon. That eerie whistling turns into Mann just tunefully singing the name of the band over and over: "Babylon zoo, ba-by-lon-zoo". Yeah, that's as if anyone forgot the name of your band, you have to fucking remind us. I mean, this is a ROCK song. Maybe if you're rapping, you get the rights to say the names of the people who are on the track. But if you're a rock band, then that's a cardinal sin. Never should a you sing the name of your band repeatedly and call it a verse. It's like Mann ran out of sci-fi shit to talk about for a third verse, so he completely scrapped the verse and replaced it with weird whistling and repeating the band's name. Subtle.
So then the familiar roaring guitars come in, and he just keeps repeating the band's name for all eternity. He likes to repeat things, doesn't he? No wonder his band never repeated this kind of hit.
But then, Mann does something relatively remarkable. He skips the bridge, the carousel part, the second bridge, and just cuts straight to the chorus! Oh NOW you cut to the chorus Mann, after making us listen to the name of your band 87,000 times.
So two more choruses, and then for the coda he... FORGETS the chorus, and just starts singing the word "Spaceman" repeatedly, and then just the words "Space" and "Man" until we are finally relieved of our ear torture with the fadeout.
What a jumbled piece of shit this song is. This has gotta be the worst put-together piece of crap the record industry ever produced and promoted. And you're telling me back in 96' every kid on every block was saying "You gotta pick up this new Babylon Zoo record. It changed my life man. I can sooo relate to this music" or any of the billions of other reasons kids go to pick up a record? That's bullshit.
This song SUCKS ass, and shows us all how stupid Englishmen can be in their taste in music. For a country that brought us The Beatles, The Stones, The Who, Oasis, they are fortunate that no one spoke the name Ba-By-Lon-Zoo after 1996. And for GOD's sake, even with all this 80s and 90s' reunion bullshit, I hope it stays that way.
