Yesterday, NASA’s Artemis II mission lifted off from Kennedy Space Center at 6:35 p.m. Eastern, carrying Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Canada’s own Jeremy Hansen on the first crewed lunar flyby in more than half a century. It is the first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit since Apollo 17 in December 1972. That is a staggering thing to sit with.
The Moon has been a muse for musicians since long before we had any real hope of getting there. It has stood in for longing, madness, mystery, romance, and the terrifying vastness of everything we don’t understand. As four human beings arc their way around it right now, it seems like exactly the right moment to revisit some of the music they’ve inspired. Here are ten songs about the Moon that hold up brilliantly.
“Fly Me to the Moon” by Frank Sinatra
Written by Bart Howard in 1954 and recorded by dozens of artists, it was Sinatra’s 1964 version with the Count Basie Orchestra that became the definitive one. It was so definitive, in fact, that Buzz Aldrin played it on a portable cassette player aboard Apollo 11, making it the first music heard on the Moon. That detail alone earns it a permanent place in this list.
“Moonage Daydream” by David Bowie
Released on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars in 1972, the same year the last Apollo astronauts left the lunar surface, this song crackles with alien electricity and pure Bowie strangeness. It is a song about otherness and longing for the cosmos, delivered by a man who understood both better than almost anyone.
“Moon River” by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, performed by Audrey Hepburn
Written for the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany’s, this is one of the most quietly devastating songs ever recorded. Hepburn performed it with just a guitar in a single take, and the Academy tried to cut it from the film before she reportedly threatened anyone who tried. They kept it. They were right.
“Walking on the Moon” by The Polic
Sting wrote this in a Munich hotel room after a long night out, and the woozy, floating bassline he came up with is one of the greatest grooves in the history of rock music. Released in 1979, it sits somewhere between love song and astronaut daydream, which is exactly the right place to sit.
“Pink Moon” by Nick Drake
The entire album took two hours to record in 1972. Drake arrived at the studio unannounced, laid down the vocals and guitar in almost complete silence, and left. The title track is barely two minutes long and contains more emotional weight per second than most artists manage in a full career. It remains one of the most haunting recordings ever made.
“Bark at the Moon” by Ozzy Osbourne
Because this list needed some teeth. Released in 1983, Ozzy went full werewolf on the title track of his third solo album, and the result is a gloriously unhinged piece of heavy metal theatre. It has absolutely nothing to do with space exploration and everything to do with why rock and roll exists.
“Clair de Lune” by Claude Debussy
Technically not a song, but disqualifying it would be absurd. Composed in 1905 as part of Suite bergamasque, Debussy’s depiction of moonlight on water is one of the most perfectly constructed pieces of music in the Western canon. Astronaut Chris Hadfield once named it as one of the pieces he’d want on the International Space Station. Good call.
“Dark Side of the Moon” (entire album) by Pink Floyd
Yes, it counts. Released in 1973 and spending a record-breaking 741 consecutive weeks on the Billboard charts, this is arguably the most ambitious piece of music ever built around lunar imagery. The far side of the Moon that Artemis II’s Orion spacecraft will skim past this week is the same dark side that Roger Waters, David Gilmour, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright turned into the greatest rock album ever recorded. The timing feels appropriate.
“Bad Moon Rising” by Creedence Clearwater Revival
John Fogerty wrote this in about ten minutes after watching the 1941 film The Devil and Daniel Webster, inspired by a storm sequence that gave him the image of a hurricane coming. It became one of the most covered songs in history and one of the most instantly recognizable guitar riffs ever committed to tape. Released in 1969, the same year Apollo 11 landed. The Moon was having quite a year.
“Man on the Moon” by R.E.M.
Released in 1992 on Automatic for the People, this is one of Michael Stipe’s most opaque and beautiful songs, a tribute to comedian and professional chaos agent Andy Kaufman wrapped inside a meditation on belief, absurdity, and what it means to take a leap into the unknown. With four astronauts literally heading toward the Moon as you read this, the song’s central question lands a little differently today.
Put some music on. Look up. It’s a good week to be alive.