Moonage Daydream (Guardians of the Galaxy)

Bowie at his most cosmically unhinged. "Moonage Daydream" arrives like a transmission from a frequency that doesn't exist on any dial — the opening guitar riff is distorted and lurching, Mick Ronson's tone somewhere between power chord and feedback sculpture, and from there the song never fully settles into any single groove. The rhythm section swings in a loose, almost prog-inflected way while Bowie rides above it all in a voice that sounds simultaneously human and performed, sincere and theatrical. The lyrics operate in the language of science fiction and sexuality collapsed together, alien imagery braided with desire, and the effect is seductive in the way that things you don't entirely understand can be seductive. This is glam rock at its philosophical peak — the era when Bowie was Ziggy Stardust, a constructed persona he wore as both costume and genuine self, and "Moonage Daydream" is the closest that record comes to capturing what it actually feels like to be inside that particular kind of strangeness. In Guardians of the Galaxy it soundtracks a scene of cosmic exploration, which is exactly right: the song is about being a stranger in strange landscapes, existing in between categories, refusing to be ordinary even when the universe offers you the option. Put this on at 2 a.m. in a city that's not your own. Let it convince you that being lost is a kind of freedom.