My Favorite One Hit Wonders of the 80s: Major Tom (Coming Home) (#2)

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For the past nine days Scott (@teamfreak16 ) and I have been looking at the 80s, which was one of the greatest decades ever for classic songs that turned out to be an act's only hit. One of the big decades for "one hit wonders," we have not matched on a single song. Here's my penultimate entry. #2: Major Tom (Coming Home) - Peter Schilling How cool is this? There were three "one hit wonders" in the 80s that had German and English versions. One of them, "Der Kommissar," was on my list. Another, Nina's "99 Luftballoons" (done as "99 Red Balloons in English, but my extensive watching of Hogan's Heroes [that's my German lesson, thank you ] tells me luft means "air," not "red", as the German air force was the LUFTwaffe), isn't on my list. Here we have German synth music singer Peter Schilling, who had a major hit -- his only US hit -- with a "sequel" or maybe, more correctly, Schilling's own version of what happened to David Bowie's character in Bowie's classic "Space Oddity" song. Just as with Bowie's original, you don't know really what happens to Major Tom here. Does he "fake his own death" ("hello, Major Tom, are you receiving? We're standing by. There's no reply") in order to stay in orbit for the rest of his life? Aw, who cares? This is an incredible song, which pays homage to another incredible song. It's a perfect song for the 80s. Major Tom (Coming Home) Written by Peter Schilling Recorded by Peter Schilling From Error in the System, 1983 Here's the English version that made it to #14 on the Billboard charts: