David Bowie's lyric 'Mickey Mouse has grown up a...' is completed by 'cow.'
'Life on Mars?' was written by David Bowie and released in 1971 on the album Hunky Dory. The song follows a young girl escaping into a cinema while its surreal images move through popular culture, film and social observation.
Bowie described the song as a kind of rewrite or response to the French song 'Comme d'habitude,' after an English adaptation associated with that song was developed by another songwriter. Bowie later wrote his own lyrics and created a markedly different composition.
The recording features Rick Wakeman on piano, whose dramatic playing is central to the song's theatrical quality. 'Life on Mars?' reached number three on the UK Singles Chart when reissued in 1993 and is now considered one of Bowie's signature works. The cow image is intentionally absurd and easy to misremember.