THE VIDEO Europe, "The Final Countdown," The Final Countdown, 1986, Epic
SAMPLE LYRIC "It's the final kee-yount-down / [lots of signature keyboard riff] / the final kee-yount-down / [still more keyboards]"
THE VERDICT Okay people, I'm warning you now: This post goes severely off-topic, even for me.
Well, actually technically it's not off-topic — I mean, it is all relevant to "The Final Countdown" in one way or another. But do I actually talk about the video? Umm... let's see.
I honestly could not be happier that at this point in history, this song is firmly associated with pompous weirdos. Seriously, there could be no greater tribute to Joey Tempest et al. but for this to be more or less the theme song for Gob Bluth, as masterfully played by Will Arnett on the dear, departed Arrested Development.
If you are the one person left who hasn't seen this show, what are you waiting for. Do it before the movie comes out and inevitably leaves us all with a funny taste in our mouths. I'm not saying it's going to be Sex and the City II bad, just that with this much build-up, it's going to have to be like, well, I don't even know what in order to appease the fans.
Then again, oh snap — "The Final Countdown" was also Bryan Danielson aka Daniel Bryan's intro music in ROH. What, WWE wouldn't pony up for that one? Then again, I guess "The Ride of the Valkyries" is a little more, you know, classy. But still, I would sing along with him! Plus I feel like it would allow them to play up his awesome angle as sort of an accidental ladies' man.
Anyway. "The Final Countdown." Why are we here? I had kind of wanted to save this one until I had something I was counting down to, but eventually I didn't feel like waiting. This is mainly because I recently purchased Singstar 80s — yes, the karaoke video game — and it's got "The Final Countdown" on there, and so now I have it pretty much permanently stuck in my head.
Sadly, this is more or less the only metal or even metal-ish song on that game— there's no Poison or anything (that said, I think I have "Every Rose Has Its Thorn" on not one but two other karaoke games).
They do a weird job with it, too — there's not enough singing at the beginning, so they make you sing along with the keyboard. "Da da da da, dadadadat-da!" over and over again.
But singing "The Final Countdown" does force you to remember what a totally bizarre song it is. You sometimes forget when you're listening to it, 'cause Joey's weird screechy voice is really easy to hear as nonsense syllables, but this song actually has a plot.
It's about a manned space mission to Venus. I guess you could see it as a sort of internal monologue for the astronauts. Supposedly Joey Tempest copied the premise directly from was inspired by "Space Oddity." (Which was inspired by 2001 — how far back can we trace this thing?) But trust, this is no heir even to "Major Tom (Coming Home)". Possibly though it is an heir to First Spaceship on Venus.
Okay really though, this is interesting. So Stanley Kubrick directs 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is written by Arthur C. Clarke, who based it partially on various pieces of short science fiction he'd written. That film inspires David Bowie to write "Space Oddity," which is a dialogue between "ground control" and "Major Tom." I guess he didn't want to call him "Major Dave" lest it seem like it was about himself? (Or maybe Hal said "I'm afraid I can't let you do that, David Bowie.")
Somehow a lot of accounts mix Elton John's "Rocket Man" into this lineage, since they're sort of thematically similar. As a moment's Googling just told me though, my long-time intuition about that song was correct — "Rocket Man" is not a "Space Oddity" hanger-on but is indeed based on the Ray Bradbury story "The Rocket Man."
Fun fact about me: I am not much of one for science fiction, but I have a deep affection for Ray Bradbury. I read The Illustrated Man, which includes "The Rocket Man", at my dad's suggestion when I was ten, and loooved it. I've read a lot more since, but it's still my favorite.
In any event, Elton John's "Rocket Man" is on a separate mission from "Major Tom." However, he is not on a separate mission from the much less well-known song by the same name that apparently Bernie Taupin nabbed that song from. Sigh. Anyway, that "Rocket Man" was based on the Bradbury story, so we can still count it as separate from this whole "Major Tom" genealogy.
Anyway, then we get the sort of beginning of the bad 80s genealogy. Bowie ushers in his 80s phase by releasing a second song referencing "Major Tom." Instead of a space hero, he's just a junkie. I'm sure it's a bunch of metaphors or whatever, but for me it's just like 80s David Bowie is not that good.
From here though, it only gets cheesier with 1983's "Major Tom (Coming Home)." Oh wait, to clarify, we've now moved on from David Bowie to Peter Schilling. In any event, it offers much more specificity as to what the hell happened up in space, and seems to offer us a vision of Tom as peacefully reconciled to his own demise. Or sort of hallucinating at the end and believing his home to be in space. Whatever.
All of this finally brings us to 1986, and Europe. Instead of just "Major Tom", now we've got a group of astronauts doing a sort of group internal monologue. The "her" in this one is Earth, not a wife and kids as in Bowie or Schilling. But Europe's major addition to the whole "Major Tom" mythology is his destination: Venus.
Venus? Really? I mean yes, it rhymes with "seen us." Now call me old-fashioned, but I am pretty sure "Mars" and "moon" rhyme with quite a few things, too. I mean Venus just does not seem hospitable. I remember learning all the different planets in third grade or so, and it was like well Mercury's close to the sun and way too hot. But then Venus is like, covered with poisonous gases. So why not, I don't know, the moon? It's right there. You're all bouncy on it. It's not crazy-hot. Plus given that all these songs are about the space program of the 1960s, the real-life objective was clearly the moon.
But if Europe want to go all exotic, why not Mars? Mars does seem to be the one that people feel is most feasible. I can think of like, dozens of Bradbury stories that take place on Mars (I mean, The Martian Chronicles is more or less just Mars-related stories!). But I can only think of one that takes place on Venus — "The Long Rain," which is also in The Illustrated Man. Spoiler alert: It doesn't go too well for those astronauts.
Mercifully, Europe don't have the last word in the "Major Tom" mythology — I'm sure there's actually much more of it than what I'm chronicling here, but I'm limited by what I know about.
In any event, the most recent addition I can think of comes from one of my favorite TV shows, The Venture Brothers. In their first season and in what I still think is one of their finest episodes — "Ghosts of the Sargasso" — they basically do "Space Oddity." Masterfully, as always, it combines being hilarious and containing a plethora of pop-culture references with creating a complex, detailed world for the characters.
"Major Tom" was sent to space by Dr. Jonas Venture, his wife remarried the "Action Man" (who then is revealed to be a member of Team Venture), and so on. Oh, and a lot of it is a combined homage to one of the earliest episodes of Jonny Quest ("Mystery of the Lizard Men," which also takes place in the Sargasso Sea) and to numerous episodes of various Scooby-Doo shows (all the ones featuring ghost pirates). I mean, how can I not love this?
Hmm, wasn't there something I was supposed to be talking about? Ohhh right, the video, the video.
Well. We basically see Europe performing live-ish (in their homeland of Sweden, by the way) interspersed with footage of their "control room", as well as shots of various places in Europe (the continent, not the band! There's likely also a lot of Sweden in there, but I'm bad at recognizing this stuff). A lot of the footage has old-school computer text — you know, green or yellow text on a black screen with a blinking box cursor — superimposed over it.
But yeah, that's about it. I mean, unless you really want a lot of descriptions of Joey's flared nostrils, crazy perm, and Johnny Nitro necklace. But really, do you want that? Wasn't learning about all these weird songs related to "The Final Countdown" more worthwhile? Maybe?