STEREOGUM February 26, 2024 4:01 PM BY JAMES RETTIG
Humans have finally put a Timbaland song on the moon. Last week, the Odysseus became the first private lunar spacecraft to land on the surface of the moon, and the first American-built lander to be on the moon since 1972. Included with the lander were digitized recordings of some of the most popular musicians of all time.
As Billboard reports, the lander is home to a “lunar art museum” that traces human artistic achievement from the beginning of recorded history through now, and that includes songs by Elvis Presley, Marvin Gaye, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Sly & the Family Stone, Bob Marley, Janis Joplin, the Who, and more. Among the 25,000 songs included on a “glass, nickel and NanoFiche structure built to last millions of, if not a billion, years” are some “modern-day beats by Timbaland.”
“This is music that stands the test of time,” Dallas Santana, who runs a company called Space Blue that was responsible for the museum, told Billboard. He also mentioned that there are unreleased recordings from some of the musicians that were sent up to the moon, specifically some early Jimi Hendrix recordings that have apparently never seen the light of day.
To gain the rights to the music that now lives on the moon, Santana created an entity called Lunar Records, partnering with Beverly Hills Productions and Melody Trust.
The Odysseus hitched a ride to the moon aboard a SpaceX rocket, though Dallas went out of his way to tell Billboard that Elon Musk did not know what musicians would be sent up with the lunar lander: “Elon Musk is the greatest rocketeer of all time, we’re grateful for his company. When we decided to have conversations about musicians last year, we thought it was not appropriate to bring to it to his attention what we were going to do,” he said. “And musicians were concerned about that. They said, ‘Does Elon Musk have anything to do with deciding what musicians go up there?’ And I said, ‘Absolutely not, this is a private payload.’”