To promote the single, photographer Mick Rock filmed a video that shows Bowie in make-up and a turquoise suit singing the song against a white backdrop.

Artists including Barbra Streisand, and Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, have recorded cover versions of the song; and following Bowie's death in 2016, "Life on Mars?"

Heath, who had a limited option for the song's British rights, asked Platz for a songwriter to write English lyrics for "Comme d'habitude".

[a] Bowie's translation, which was titled "Even a Fool Learns to Love", was influenced by his recent work as a mime artist and included a reference to his 1967 track "When I Live My Dream".

[5] After Bowie recorded an unreleased demo of "Comme d'habitude" in February 1968, the song's French publishers rejected him, primarily due to his obscurity.

Soon after, songwriter Paul Anka bought the rights to "Comme d'habitude" and rewrote it as "My Way", which was recorded and made famous by American singer Frank Sinatra in 1969.

"[15] Bowie's original handwritten lyrics were vastly different—save for the chorus—from the finished recording; they were more akin to the tone of Hunky Dory's other Nietzsche-inspired numbers: "There's a shoulder-rock movement and the trembling starts / And a great Lord signs in vain / What can you buy when there's no-one to tell you / What a bargain you made ..."[16] Bowie recorded a demo of "Life on Mars?"

This early demo contains only the first verse and chorus, and several lyrical variations from the finished track, including "It's a simple but small affair"; "Her mother is yelling no, and her father has asked her to go"; and "It's a time for the lawman beating up the wrong guy".

[8] In July that year, Defries sent a letter to comedian and jazz pianist Dudley Moore, asking him to play piano during a session.

in "their raw brilliance [...] the finest selection of songs I have ever heard in one sitting in my entire life [...] I couldn't wait to get into the studio and record them".

[27] According to Wakeman; "I remember leaving [the studio] and saying to a couple of friends that I met that evening in a local pub that I'd just played on the best song that I'd ever had the privilege to work on".

has a complex structure; the verses are primarily in the key of F major but chords change throughout, including C7 ("told her to go"), F ("but her friend"), and later on, C9 to A♭ ("lived it ten times").

Instruments begin to build at the pre-chorus; strings and bass crash on the downbeat, Wakeman continues a run of chords on piano, while the intensity of Bowie's voice grows, changing from D to B♭ ("focus on/SAI-LORS").

The other instruments act as a counterpoint to the strings during the chorus: according to O'Leary, drummer Woodmansey plays a "snare-medium tom fill to echo a descending violin line", while Wakeman adds "dancing" replies on piano.

[8] According to Pegg, the telephone bell rang during an earlier, scrapped take that was still present at the end of the tape; Bowie decided to keep it for the final mix.

[37] After the girl becomes "hooked to the silver screen",[42] Bowie uses an array of images that are typical of films,[40] naming Mickey Mouse, John Lennon, "Rule, Britannia!

[30] This is evident in the line "the film is a saddening bore—she's lived it ten times or more", which Sandford calls "a neat, if well-worn trick, blurring the art-life divide".

[64][65][66] The 2022 multi-disc box set Divine Symmetry: The Journey to Hunky Dory, which comprises home demos, BBC radio sessions, alternate mixes, and other live and studio recordings from 1971, includes several versions of "Life on Mars?

": the June 1971 demo, the 2015 remaster of the August 1971 master, the 2016 remix (in stereo and, for the first time, 5.1 surround sound), and a 2021 mix by Scott allowing the ending with the telephone bell and Ronson's cursing to be heard fully.

speaks to the longing for something more exciting that everyone has, the kind of universal theme that, when married to a sweeping melody and executed with style ... will remain the stuff of best-of lists and subpar covers.

[74][75][76] Digital Spy stated it has "perhaps become [Bowie's] signature song—filled with surreal cut-up lyrics ..., it married vivid imagery with a tender, heartbreaking melody".

A stirring, yearning melody combines with vivid, poetic imagery to accomplish a trick very particular to the art of the song: to be at once completely impenetrable and yet resonant with personal meaning.

You want to raise your voice and sing along, yet Bowie's abstract cut-up lyrics force you to invest the song with something of yourself just to make sense of the experience and then carry you away to a place resonant with intense, individual emotion.

third in a list compiling the "10 most perfect songs ever" behind Jeff Buckley's version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" and the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever".

[119] Actor Jessica Lange sang the song with a deep German accent on the fourth-season premiere of the FX television series American Horror Story: Freak Show.

Lange played a character whose surname is Mars; she wears an ice-blue trouser suit and heavy matching eye shadow in her performance, echoing Bowie's video.

"[59] In his book The Complete David Bowie, Pegg panned a 2005 easy listening version by the British group G4, calling it "heroically gruesome".

[59] In 2019, Nine Inch Nails members Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross covered the song on their soundtrack to the HBO television series Watchmen.

In 2018, the song was played on the radio of Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster, which was launched into space aboard the test flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket.

[137] A cover version by English singer Yungblud was used at the end of NASA TV's live coverage of the landing of the Mars 2020 rover.