Released: October 1, 1974

Songwriter: David Bowie

Producer: Jon Peters (II)

[Verse 1]
It's a god-awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair
But her mother is yelling "No"
And her daddy has told her to go
But her friend is nowhere to be seen
As she walks through her sunken dream
To the seat with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen

[Pre-Chorus]
But the film is a saddening bore
For she's lived it ten times or more
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on...

[Chorus]
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man, look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man, wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

[Verse 2]
It's on America's tortured brow
Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Now the workers have struck for fame
'Cause Lennon's on sale again
See the mice in their million hordes
From Ibeza to the Norfolk Broads
Rule Britannia is out of bounds
To my mother, my dog and clowns

[Pre-Chorus]
But the film is a saddening bore
'Cause I wrote it ten times before
It's about to be writ again
As I ask you to focus on

[Chorus]
Sailors fighting in the dance hall
Oh man, look at those cavemen go
It's the freakiest show
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy
Oh man, wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show
Is there life on Mars?

Barbra Streisand

Barbra Streisand is an Oscar-winning, Tony-winning, Emmy-winning, Golden Globe-winning Broadway legend, film star, movie director and one of the biggest-selling recording artists of all time - a staggering amount of accomplishments for someone whose mother insisted she not to go into show business.

By the time she was sixteen, she’d graduated high school and was living on her own in Manhattan. After winning a talent contest at a gay bar on West 9th Street, Streisand’s ‘spellbinding’ voice quickly became popular at New York clubs and in Broadway shows. After appearances on a number of popular television shows including The Tonight Show, Streisand signed with Columbia Records and released several top 10 albums in the 1960s, scoring two US top 40 hits with “People” and “Second Hand Rose”.

Her success as a recording artist continued through the 1970s with several more gold/platinum-certified albums and four US “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers”, “No More Tears”, the Oscar-winning “The Way We Were”, and the Academy Award-winning “Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star Is Born)”. The 1980s would begin with Streisand’s biggest-selling release of her career Guilty, a collaborative effort with BeeGees member Barry Gibb. It topped the albums chart in several countries and as did its lead single “Woman In Love”.