We Came from Outer Space
Writers - Tennant/Lowe
First released - 1993
Original album - Relentless
Subsequent albums - (none)
Other releases - (none)
There's actually a lot of words here (making it, in a sense, even wordier than "One Thing Leads to Another" and "Forever in Love"), but they're extremely difficult to make out and may seem to exist more for the sounds they make than for any real meaning. If there is a meaning, it appears to have something to do with the kinds of verbal exchanges that might take place between earthlings and space-aliens who have just landed. Some of them are delightful, such as "You know the difference between the two genders? No."
In fact, that very exchange, as well as the repeated words "We came from outer space toto our parents," has inspired one of my online correspondents to interpret this track (quite cleverly, I might add) as an ironic commentary on how gay people strike some heterosexualsperhaps their own parentsas beings so different in certain ways (particularly regarding gender relationships and perceptions) that they might as well be from another world. Interestingly, this mirrors the common glam-rock "conceit that gayness is the stuff of science fiction" (as I put it on page 111 of my 1994 book Rock on the Wild Side), most notably employed by David Bowie and Jobriath, with its implied link between homo/bisexuality and space aliens. Think Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.
The music, incidentally, features a repeating
female vocal motif that sounds vaguely based on the old Johnny Weissmuller Tarzan
vocal yell. Probably just a coincidence. ![]()
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