SPACE MAN

Sam Ryder started out in the music industry in the late 2000s as frontman for UK band The Morning After. He then fronted the Canadian outfit Blessed By A Broken Heart and the American rock group Close Your Eyes before going solo in 2014. Ryder rose to prominence during the first COVID-19 lockdown when he started posting covers of hits on TikTok. They attracted the attention of such megastars as Sia, Justin Bieber and Alicia Keys, and he became the platform's most-followed UK artist in 2020. His social media success led to a recording contract with Parlophone and the management agency TaP Music. Ryder wrote "Space Man" during the COVID-19 pandemic before he'd signed to Parlophone. It was one of the songs that got the labels interested.

"Spaceman" finds Sam Ryder imagining he was an astronaut. Though he has "a bird's eye view" of Earth and gets to "rub shoulders with the stars," the singer pines for what he's left behind. Floating on his own in the vacuum of space, Ryder is lonely and homesick. "There's nothing but space, man," he croons. "And I wanna go home."

Critics have compared "Space Man" to Elton John's music. Certainly its themes of isolation and an astronaut missing his loved ones back home bear comparisons to "Rocket Man."