Wednesday 3 March 2021

and there’s no one there to raise them—if you did

Released as a single on this day in 1972 from the studio album Honky Chรขteau, the song parenthetically titled I think It’s Going to Be a Long, Long Time by Elton John and Bernie Taupin, the narrative lyric was inspired by elements of the eponymous short story by Ray Bradbury in his The Illustrated Man collection and David Bowie’s 1969 “Space Oddity,” the pieces all triangulating on the lament that astronauts were no longer heroes and that space travel was becoming routine, mundane.