Marian Call and Molly Lewis perform this bizarre take on David Bowie’s “Space Oddity,” reworking the lyrics to contain only the thousand most common words in English. The idea was inspired in part by xkcd’s “Up-Goer Five” comic and the video incorporates “sweded” special effects a la Michel Gondry. I love the picture-in-picture playback of Bowie’s original music video, so you can compare all the movements and funny facial expressions between the two videos.
Want to try your hand at “up-goer five” language? You can use this handy Up-Goer Five Text Editor created by Theo Sanderson. Type in anything that isn’t one of the top thousand words, and it flags you. (And Sanderson has helpfully provided a list of the words, too, in case you don’t have that memorized.)
Enjoy!
