Astronaut's Playlist: 101 Songs About Stars, Planets and Space

You're either fascinated with space or you just don't get what the fuss is all about. After all, people tend to look outward or inward.

If meteors, asteroids, and other galaxies intrigue you and you think rocketry and NASA astronauts are about as cool as rock stars, then this playlist is right up your planetary alley!

We've gathered rock, country, classic, R&B, and reggae favorites that reference all things space. Celebrate your love of the the stars, planets and outer space with a customized song list.

The man in this 2014 is falling in love and thus making himself vulnerable. His sweetheart brings light to his world like a sky full of stars.

The narrator in this catchy 2013 song is tired of pursuing material happiness. Rather, he wants to be more open to life's possibilities, focus on the good things he has going for him, and live more freely. He's counting his stars.

In this 1954 classic, Ole' Blue Eyes is smitten with a woman whose love feels otherworldly:

Fly me to the moon
Let me play among the stars
Let me see what spring is like on
A-Jupiter and Mars.

A Grammy award winner, this 2001 song was inspired by the death of the lead singer's mother. He envisions her returning to him to deliver messages of peace and love:

Now that she's back in the atmosphere
With drops of Jupiter in her hair, hey, hey
She acts like summer and walks like rain
Reminds me that there's time to change, hey, hey.

In this upbeat dance hit from 1983, Madonna refers to her boyfriend as a star who lights her world up:

You must be my lucky star
'Cause you make the darkness seem so far
And when I'm lost you'll be my guide
I just turn around and you're by my side.

Who ever thought of being an astronaut as having just another 9-to-5 job? This 1972 hit is a signature song for Elton John. It describes the loneliness of being an astronaut in outer space, separated from those you love.

A man is separated by great distance from his sweetheart in this 2014 song, but he sees that the sky full of stars bridges the distance between them. The stars will guide her back to him.

This 1972 heavy metal song describes what it would be like to be bouncing around the galaxy, visiting far reaches of the solar system, and groovin' with aliens from other planets.

Despite the differences among people, we have one basic commonality, according to this 2002 song: we're made of the same cosmic ingredients:

People they come together
People they fall apart
No one can stop us now
'Cause we are all made of stars.

The protagonist in this 2006 alternative rock song imagines that a spaceship is taking him away from everyone he knows and loves. Far away, across "black holes and revelations," he will never let go of the memory of the special woman he loves.

The guy in this 1969 song may have his feet on this rock we call Earth, but his head is somewhere in the clouds. He sounds like he's been sipping rocket fuel or something:

I'm a space cowboy
Bet you weren't ready for that
I'm a space cowboy
I'm sure you know where it's at.

This 2008 reggae-inspired remake of The Police classic is catchy and features a man who romantically ponders what moon walking with his beau might be like:

Giant steps are what you take
Walking on the moon
I hope my legs don't break
Walking on the moon
We could walk forever
Walking on the moon
We could live together
Walking on, walking on the moon.

This 1986 song by the Swedish group Europe was a worldwide hit and has since been used at sporting events to energize crowds. The lyrics imagine a spaceflight bound for Venus, on a trip where there's no going back.

Released just days before the launch of Apollo 11 — the shuttle with the first manned moon landing — this 1969 song was David Bowie's first hit, and it became a signature song. The song is about an imaginary astronaut's troubled space trip which leaves him floating helplessly above the Earth and moon.

This 2016 song speaks about a sweet epiphany. A woman acknowledges the depths of her feelings for her sweetheart by telling him that he is everything in the world to her:

You are like a new sunrise
You have opened up my eyes
There's nothing in the world like you
You're my stars and moon.

Katy Perry is in love with a guy who is an alien, a supernatural extraterrestrial from a whole different world. She says that his kiss is cosmic and she wants to follow him to his strange universe. Hmmm. What will her mother say about this one?

This 2008 song involves an alien abduction in which a man is ripped from his bed and subjected to strange tests and procedures. Although the spaceman tries to convince him the experience was all in his mind, he knows it was real.

The Andromeda is the nearest major galaxy to the Milky Way. The two galaxies may have collided three billion years ago and could do so again in the future. In this 2010 song, an intergalactic space traveler departs Andromeda for another world yet knows he may die before he gets there.

Named one of Rolling Stone's greatest 500 songs of all time, this 1969 classic has been recorded by more than 20 artists in styles as diverse as psychedelic, folk, and rock. However, CCR, the originators, sung it best. The song is supposed to be about "the apocalypse that was going to be visited upon us."

An eclipse occurs when one celestial body (like the sun) obscures the light from another (like the moon). It's a 1983 power ballad about the desperation of love that isn't returned as fully as one would wish:

Once upon a time there was light in my life
But now there's only love in the dark
Nothing I can say
A total eclipse of the heart.

This 1996 song compares love and attraction to planets, stars, and gravity. The analogy is almost poetic.

This catchy 2005 song highlights the importance of paying attention to the value of what makes us all unique:

Stars rise and the stars fall
But the ones that shine the brightest aren't stars at all
They're the planets just like us and from big to small
We all shine, shine, shine, we all shine.

Well, this is a super dramatic to say that your love is everlasting. The 2010 song was featured as a part of the official song track for the movie, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. And since vampires live so long, it's a fitting analogy.

A guy laments the problem of space debris in this 1978 song. Space junk took a personal toll when a piece entered Earth's orbit and crashed into his best girl, Sally. Walking down the street, she was flattened. The poor girl never saw it coming.

Life on the moon isn't all it's cracked up to be, according to the protagonist in this 2008 song. He feels alone in the crowd of others who are colonizing the moon. The poor guy just wants to go home because he misses his sweetheart back on Earth.

Notes

¹Zenko, Micah. "A Code of Conduct for Outer Space." Council on Foreign Relations. Last modified November 2011. http://www.cfr.org/space/code-conduct-outer-space/p26556.