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‘I didn’t engage with the Bowie song’: Peter Schilling on Major Tom, the unofficial anthem of the Euros
First released in 1983 the German new wave song has since become a byword for 80s cool – now it is about to unite the tournament on the terraces
Meaning “completely untethered”, these two words form the chorus of Peter Schilling’s Major Tom, a German new wave song that first climbed to the top of charts around the world in 1983 but stands good chances of becoming the unofficial anthem of the football tournament summer 41 years later. The shift from verse to chorus – reversing the groove, switching to double-time, climbing chords – has a liberating effect: as the spaceship hauls itself into the atmosphere, “completely untethered”, planet Earth and all its troubles shrink into the distance. Major Tom’s escapist fantasy has resonated in Germany, encapsulating a yearning for the sporting event to provide a moment of weightlessness after the heavy debates over Ukraine, climate measures and immigration that have dragged the country down in recent years.
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