Rocktrospectiva: David Bowie's Breakthrough "Hallo Spaceboy (Pet Shop Boys Remix) Turns 30

Released on 19 February 1996 "Hallo Spaceboy was a song by the English musician David Bowie from his 20th studio album, Outside. It originated as an instrumental by Reeves Gabrels called "Moondust", which Bowie and Brian Eno stripped down and used to form the final track. An industrial rock and electronica track influenced by artists such as Nine Inch Nails, the song featured synthesisers, loops and distorted guitar lines. The lyrics were influenced by the sound poet and painter Brion Gysin, and contained images of apocalypse and continued the androgynous lyrics of former Bowie songs such as "Rebel Rebel" and "Boys Keep Swinging".

It was the third and final single from Outside in February 1996, "Hallo Spaceboy" was remixed by the Pet Shop Boys, who added a disco sound and lyrics referencing the Major Tom character from Bowie's "Space Oddity". The single reached number 12 in the UK and charted in other European countries. Its accompanying music video, directed by David Mallet, mixes shots of both Bowie and Pet Shop Boys with footage of science fiction clips, atomic bomb testing footage and television advertising clips. Both versions of "Hallo Spaceboy" have been positively received and have appeared on lists of Bowie's best songs. Bowie performed "Hallo Spaceboy" frequently on his concert tours, recordings from which have appeared on live albums.

Written by David Bowie and Brian Eno, "Hallo Spaceboy" developed from an ambient instrumental piece written by the guitarist Reeves Gabrels called "Moondust". Initial work on the track began during a recording session at Mountain Studios in Montreux in 1994, shortly after the main sessions for the Leon project concluded. Bowie's biographers Nicholas Pegg and Chris O'Leary point to the influence of the poet and artist Brion Gysin, who developed a cut-up technique with William S. Burroughs that Bowie had, on several occasions, utilised for song lyrics. During the recording, Bowie spoke "If I fall, moondust will cover me", reportedly Gysin's final words before his death in 1986. Work halted on the track following the session, as Bowie believed "there wasn't anything special going on with that piece".

The track resurfaced on 17 January 1995 during the Outside sessions in New York City at The Hit Factory. Eno wrote in his diary that it was "stripped down to almost nothing [before] I wrote some lightning chords and space and suddenly, miraculously, we had something." The final track featured Bowie, Eno, Gabrels, Carlos Alomar (guitar), Yossi Fine (bass), Mike Garson (piano) and Joey Baron (drums). After finishing the song, Bowie said, "I adore that track. In my mind, it was like Jim Morrison meets industrial. When I heard it back, I thought, 'Fuck me. It's like metal Doors.' It's an extraordinary sound." Gabrels later expressed disappointment in not receiving a co-writing credit for the song.

Commentators have characterised "Hallo Spaceboy" as industrial rock and electronica. Pegg describes the song as "a hardcore maelstrom of sci-fi noise, hypnotic high-speed drumming and an insistent, speaker-hopping four-note guitar riff". The song's influences range from the Pixies and Pornography-era Cure to Nine Inch Nails and the Smashing Pumpkins; Bowie reportedly stated that he was aiming for a Nine Inch Nails-type sound. Featuring synthesisers, loops and distorted guitar lines, a few reviewers compared the song's sound to Bowie's 1974 album Diamond Dogs and his work with the rock band Tin Machine. The author Dave Thompson argued that the song would not have felt out of place as a bonus track on that album. Lyrically, Pegg states that "Hallo Spaceboy" captures the "millennial angst" of the Outside album and continues the androgynous lyrics of songs such as "Rebel Rebel" (1974) and "Boys Keep Swinging" (1979) with the line "Do you like girls or boys? / It's confusing these days". Some of the words and ideals, such as "chaos", "dust" and "hallo", and visions of a science fiction apocalypse were recycled from Tin Machine's "Baby Universal" (1991).

The album Outside was released on 5 September 1995, with "Hallo Spaceboy" sequenced as the sixth track. The song was a mainstay on Bowie's 1995 Outside Tour, and was often played with Nine Inch Nails and later as the closing track. Bowie intended "Hallo Spaceboy" to be his next single after "Strangers When We Meet". 

Believing the original version of "Hallo Spaceboy" was unlikely to be commercial sucessful, Bowie commissioned Neil Tennant of the Pet Shop Boys to remix the song for release as the third single from Outside. As a lifelong Bowie fan, Tennant agreed and remixed the track at Mayfair Studios in London between 11–15 December 1995. Tennant replaced the song's anger with electronics and added Pet Shop Boys' signature backing vocals to the track. Since the original contained only a single verse, and a lyric featuring feelings of alienation, Tennant and his bandmate Chris Lowe added lyrical fragments from Bowie's 1969 song "Space Oddity", using a Gysin-style cut-up technique to create a second verse: "Ground to Major, bye bye Tom / dead the circuit, countdown's wrong / Planet Earth is control on?" O'Leary argues that the additions turned the song's cry of "this chaos is killing me" into a plea from an astronaut "strung out in heaven".

Bowie initially expressed reservation about the additions when Tennant told him during a telephone conversation, but later agreed that they worked well. Bowie rerecorded his lead vocal so the single became a duet with Tennant. Tennant told NME in a 1997 interview that he and Lowe, working alongside Bowie, had completed what Tennant called the "Major Tom trilogy", in reference to the fictional astronaut who first appeared in "Space Oddity" and later appeared in "Ashes to Ashes" (1980). Tennant explained, "I said to Bowie, 'It's like Major Tom is in one of those Russian spaceships they can't afford to bring down,' and he said, 'Oh wow, is that where he is?'" Compared to the original version, the remix features a disco edge.

The single was finally released on 19 February 1996, through several formats, including a 7" single through BMG/RCA, a CD single through Arista/RCA and a 12" promo in the US through Virgin. The CD single was packaged with a reissue of "The Hearts Filthy Lesson" and live renditions of "Under Pressure" (1981) and "Moonage Daydream" (1972). The single was a success across Europe, reaching number 12 in the UK, becoming Bowie's highest charting single since "Jump They Say" (1993). The remixed "Hallo Spaceboy" topped the singles chart in Latvia, further charting in Australia (36), Austria (37), Belgium Flanders (48) and Wallonia (30), Finland (8), Germany (59), Ireland (21), the Netherlands Top 40 and Single Top 100 (24 and 33, respectively), Scotland (10) and Sweden (12).

The music video for "Hallo Spaceboy" was directed by Bowie's longtime director David Mallet. Bowie performed the song with Pet Shop Boys at the Brit Awards on 19 February 1996, and again on Top of the Pops on 1 March. According to O'Leary, Bowie "thrashed around" during these performances while Tennant sang calmly.

Both versions of "Hallo Spaceboy" have received positive reviews from music critics and biographers. Discussing the original, the biographer Marc Spitz called it Bowie's "most convincing rocker" since "Rebel Rebel", and David Buckley said the track is "quite daring, with a hard, industrial menace and a great use of dynamics". Reviewing the Pet Shop Boys remix, Simon Price from Melody Maker said that "this sounds like the Pet Shop Boys without anything you could call a chorus. The bit where Bowie's gin-and-lemon voice mixes with Neil Tennant's Amaretto Disaronno on the line Do you like girls or boys? It's confusing these days... is one to hoist aloft around the room on a red velvet cushion, though." Mojo magazine's Mark Paytress opined that adding Pet Shop Boys was a "masterstroke"