“Incredibly cheap”: The 1972 album Joe Elliott wanted to send to space

The article looks back at the Voyager Golden Record, the collection of music NASA sent into space in 1977 to convey human culture and emotion to any extraterrestrial listeners, and uses it as a springboard to explore music's long fascination with space, from Sinatra and Elton John to David Bowie's numerous alien-themed songs and characters. It highlights a 2022 comment from Def Leppard's Joe Elliott, who argued that Bowie's 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars should have been included on the record instead of Chuck Berry, calling it "incredibly cheap" yet "incredibly important."

The piece counters Elliott's suggestion, noting that Ziggy Stardust already portrays an alien character, meaning any extraterrestrial listener would already be familiar with that perspective, whereas Chuck Berry's music better conveys the human experience the record was designed to communicate. The Golden Record itself featured a broad mix of traditional, classical and contemporary music, including works by Stravinsky, Beethoven, Chuck Berry and Blind Willie Johnson, pressed onto a 12-inch gold-plated copper disc.