The Carpenters' Version
The Carpenters' version from their Passage album charted worldwide and appeared on several of their hits compilations. The success of their version led to the duo receiving many letters from people asking when World Contact Day would be held. It also led to a Carpenters television special, The Carpenters...Space Encounters.
While Klaatu's original opens with various sounds of living species, the Carpenters' version opens with a radio DJ on a request show. The DJ identifies a phone caller as "Mike Ledgerwood". When the DJ asks Mike for his song request, an alien-sounding voice responds. The DJ is voiced by longstanding Carpenters' guitarist Tony Peluso, who can be seen in that role at the start of the video for this track.
The Carpenters' arrangement of the song was later copied on a sound-alike cover released on the 1977 album Top of the Pops, Volume 62.
The cover art was painted by Star Trek designer Andrew Probert.
In April 2011, the song was featured in the BBC series Wonders of the Solar System hosted by Dr. Brian Cox.
The song was also covered by the children of the The Langley Schools Music Project. Another version can be found on the Carpenters tribute album If I Were a Carpenter performed by the band Babes in Toyland. The Flowers of Hell released a version on their 2012 album Odes, on which they cover their influences.
The group Lard recreates the chorus with a somewhat similar vocal, but completely different lyrics, in the song "Pineapple Face" from the album The Last Temptation of Reid. "Pineapple Face" is a reference to Manuel Noriega and the song presents the lyrics as the thoughts and words of Noriega while taking refuge in the Vatican embassy after the U.S. military surrounded it during Operation Nifty Package.
Read more about this topic: Calling Occupants Of Interplanetary Craft
Famous quotes containing the word version:
“Truth cannot be defined or tested by agreement with ‘the world’; for not only do truths differ for different worlds but the nature of agreement between a world apart from it is notoriously nebulous. Rather—speaking loosely and without trying to answer either Pilate’s question or Tarski’s—a version is to be taken to be true when it offends no unyielding beliefs and none of its own precepts.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)