"Life on Mars?"
Album track by David Bowie
From the album Hunky Dory
Single Released	1973 (Album: 1971)
Recorded	Trident Studios
Genre	???
Length	3:48
Producer	Ken Scott
Chart Position	3 (UK)
Hunky Dory track listing
3 "Eight Line Poem"	4 "Life on Mars?"	5 "Kooks"

"Life on Mars?" is a song by David Bowie, first released in 1971 on the album Hunky Dory. The song featured guest piano work by Yes keyboardist Rick Wakeman.

The song has its origins from an occurrence where Bowie was asked to write English lyrics to a French song ("Comme d'habitude"), the song he came up with was "Even a Fool Learns to Love". The Canadian songwriter Paul Anka bought the rights to the original French version, and rewrote it into an English song called "My Way". Bowie's version was never released. "Life on Mars?" was Bowie's riposte to losing out on a fortune. "Life on Mars?" has identical chords to "My Way."

The song is about a girl visiting a cinema after an argument with her parents; the final sentence "is there life on Mars?" alludes to an otherwise unmentioned film that presumably poses the same question. The lyrics are fairly oblique, with confusing lines such as "It's on Amerika's tortured brow/That Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow."

The song was referenced by the Bush song "Everything Zen," which also featured the line "Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow."

"Life on Mars?" was finally released as a single in 1973, two years after it appeared on Hunky Dory. It reached #3 in the UK Singles Chart

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/soldonsong/songlibrary/lifeonmars.shtml