Taken aboard Apollo 8 by William Anders, this iconic picture shows Earth peeking out from beyond the lunar surface as the first crewed spacecraft circumnavigated the Moon, with astronauts Anders, Frank Borman and Jim Lovell aboard.

Astronaut William Anders died in a plane crash in Washington state this week at the age of 90. There are a lot of astronauts of his era, of course, but Anders stands out because he has a big claim to fame: Along with Frank Borman and Jim Lovell (aka Tom Hanks’ character in “Apollo 13”), Anders was on the first manned spaceship to leave Earth’s gravitational sphere of influence and orbit the moon. On that trip, on Christmas Eve of 1968, he took the legendary “Earthrise” photo.

I am, famously, a big fan of space stuff. The Apollo program, the Space Shuttle program, astrophysics, astronomy—I love me some space. In fact, I’ve previously found two excuses to list songs about space in 2019 and 2021. So let’s make it three with some songs about or mentioning the moon.

Paul Simon — “Song About the Moon”

I said I would list songs about the moon and, by God, I listed “Song About the Moon.”

This song is about Paul Simon writing a song about the moon. It’s like Tenacious D’s “Tribute,” but lazier. It’s like the Nic Cage classic “Adaptation” without the surrealism. And that may sound insulting, but I assure you it’s not, I absolutely respect Simon doing this. He’s truly an example for us all.

Every band should do a meta song about their songs. Just imagine James Hetfield of Metallica shouting, “LARS BACK THERE BANGING ON THE SAME DRUM IN AN UNSPECTACULARLY STEADY RHYTHM” over Lars Ulrich drumming an unspectacularly steady rhythm. Pure art.

Savage Garden — “To the Moon and Back”

This is, at best, my third favorite Savage Garden song. “I Want You” is obviously first, then probably “Truly Madly Deeply,” then… I dunno, a many-way tie that this is a part of. But it’s good, and it has “moon” in the title.

Savage Garden as a band always fascinated me. The Australian duo broke out hot, with its first single hitting No. 4 on the U.S. charts and its debut album going seven-times platinum. Then its second album went platinum multiple times over, and its second single hit No. 1 on the U.S. charts. Then it broke up.

They insist it wasn’t acrimonious; they just wanted to do solo projects and run their recently founded record label, but that seems bizarre to me. They had a successful band! They had multiple hits across multiple albums! They did what a vast majority of bands strive for and never achieve! And yet they just gave it up. Since then, Darren Hayes hasn’t even hit No. 1 in his native Australia, and Daniel Jones moved to Las Vegas to become a real estate agent.

REM — “Man on the Moon”

The title of this one is a little misleading because Anders was never on the moon. Apollo 8 was his only space flight, and he orbited the moon 10 times. He was part of the Apollo 11 backup crew, but obviously Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins got that one.

Also, Anders was not Andy Kaufman, the subject of this song. Don’t get me wrong, Kaufman had an impressive array of characters and certainly had a lot of impressive comic stunts, but to my knowledge none of those involved actually, literally going into space. Plus, he was 19 when the flight happened, and while Anders was only 35, that looked a lot, lot older in the ’60s than it does now.

That said, while Kaufman died in 1985, there are rumors he faked his own death. I have no reason to believe them, but if that were true, he could have joined the space shuttle program.

The Marcels — “Blue Moon”

There are so many versions of “Blue Moon.” Wikipedia lists 24 artists who did a version, with the first major crossover being Elvis. But for my money, you can’t beat The Marcels.

For some reason, I can’t wrap my head around the doo-wop craze being in the early ’60s rather than, say, the early ’50s. It feels so pre-rock and roll to me, you know? But no, this came out the same year as Del Shannon’s “Runaway” and Dion’s “Runaround Sue.”

You don’t know either of those songs, do you? Bah! Youths. No respect for the classics. Never mind that I wasn’t born for more than 20 years after any of that.

Creedence Clearwater Revival — “Bad Moon Rising”

Finally, one for me: I love CCR. I love them very much. “Bad Moon Rising” is one of my favorite songs of theirs. So yeah, of course I’m adding it.

I’ve made jokes but, yeah, I really do respect William Anders and I want to say a bit more about him. After his time as an astronaut, he was appointed executive secretary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, during which he opposed the space shuttle program as it was proposed because there was more of a focus on jobs created than practicality; he wanted a smaller shuttle and more money to Skylab.

After a stint as Ambassador to Norway, he got a job at GE running the nuclear products division. In 1991 he became vice chairman of General Dynamics and immediately, at 58 years old, appointed himself test pilot for a fighter jet in development. That is the sort of power move that explains why I like him so much.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and send column ideas to him at @bayareadata.press on BlueSky.