YMMV / Space

(NB: this is referring to the band.)

• Awesome Music:
  • Many are the songs guaranteed to get the crowd going:
    • 'Female Of The Species'
    • 'Avenging Angels'
    • 'Neighbourhood'
    • 'Me And You Versus The World'
    • 'Killswitch'
    • 'Blow Up Doll'
  • Franny's performance of 'Fran In Japan' in the Tin Planet Live video also counts as this.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: every member of the 1998 Five-Man Band had their own fandom, not just Tommy. It helped that up until Jamie's departure, other band members got the spotlight: Jamie sang lead vocals on several songs, Franny had a solo spot, and during the Tin Planet era, Leon even got to do a drum solo. Yorkie also did a fair amount of interviews alongside Tommy.
  • In the second Five-Man Band, Ryan, Allan and Phil also have their fair share of fans.
• Epic Riff: 'Female Of The Species', 'Avenging Angels', 'Begin Again' and 'The Ballad Of Tom Jones'. Franny apparently got goosebumps whenever he played the latter.
• Fandom VIP: Pab UK and Eiteews, aka Paul and Donna, who run Spacetheband and are thanked in the liner notes of Suburban Rock 'N' Roll. There's also Billy Cook, who was responsible for making Love You More Than Football available to fans prior to its' official release in 2019, and Andy Wilton, a Newcastle film maker who made videos for "Drop Dead", "Mister Psycho" and "Blow Up Doll", featuring various friends of his.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Ginger Space for Jamie, as a Shout-Out to the Spice Girls.
  • 'Franchete' for Franny, due to his resemblance to Danny Trejo on the spring 2013 tour.
• Funny Moments: at the Starshaped festival in 2017 in Manchester, as there were no projectors, Tommy sang "The Ballad of Tom Jones" with a sculpture he'd made of a green-skinned zombie woman playing the part of Cerys Matthews, with her recorded vocals playing in the background. At the end of the song:
  Franny: She's giving him a blow job later. I give him one every night. (...) What's the next song, you two-timing cunt?
• Growing the Beard / Win Back the Crowd: Attack of the Mutant 50ft Kebab was well-received by Space fans and gained a whole lot of new, younger fans, some of whom were pleasantly surprised at Space's heavier direction.
  • The band have arguably been trying to shift into this as early as Music for Aliens, as a reaction to their fallout with Gut.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • 'Drop Dead' is about stalking celebrities. Guess what happened to Tommy when the band toured the US in 1997?
  • The Entitled to Have You protagonist of "Diary of a Wimp" now reads more like a product of incel culture than it did back in 2000, when it was far less of a serious concern.
  • The band did an interview in Christmas 1996 with a local radio station, Radio City, where they joked about the stresses of touring, being under pressure and getting ill. Two months later, Jamie had a nervous breakdown and temporarily left the band, and Tommy lost his voice on tour in America as a result of stress.
• Memetic Mutation: the song 'Blow Up Doll', premiered on the 2016 Give Me Your Future tour, has seen fans bringing inflatable sex dolls to gigs. The dolls became the theme of the band's Christmas show that year, which marked same day that the 'Blow Up Doll' single was released.
• Money, Dear Boy: The reason why Space covered the Bee Gees' "Massachusetts", according to Jamie; none of the band are actually fans, but they were approached to cover a Bee Gees song for a tribute album. They only picked "Massachusetts" to see if their manager could spell it. In fairness, it was for charity. Their covers of "Mad Dogs and Englishmen" and "We Gotta Get Out of This Place", recorded in the same session, were also done for this reason (though to be fair, Tommy is a genuine Noël Coward fan).
• Most Wonderful Sound: The intro to "20 Million Miles From Earth".
• Narm: Tommy had the following conversation with a Melody Maker journalist: "The new album's called Love You More Than Football...why are you laughing?" In fact, one of the main criticisms of Space was that they were too wacky and silly to be taken seriously, even when they tried to write serious songs, thanks to the constant namechecking of superheroes and villains, and some of the sound effects they used, such as fake brass.
  • 'Suburban Rock 'n' Roll' contains the line 'he buries me in soil / and it hurts like burning oil'.
  • Tin Planet and Love You More Than Football are entire albums of Narm.
  • "The Loneliest Robot". That is all.
• Nightmare Fuel: 'I Am Unlike a Lifeform You've Ever Met', the only Space song with Franny on lead vocals. It's from the point of view of a zombie talking about how he's looking forward to eating his next victim. Towards the end, the music just stops. And then starts again with the piano riff and a sample of a reporter talking about zombie attacks.
  • And if you think 'I Am Unlike A Lifeform You've Ever Met' is creepy, but some of the tracks on Attack of the Mutant 50ft Kebab are worse. Check out the lyrics to the title track and 'Happy Clowns', for instance.
  • Listening to "Hell's Barbecue" for the first time is enough to give you the heebies-jeebies.
  • The Strange World video. Creepy dolls, a wall covered in scissors, Franny's face being covered in shadows and making him look like he has a Curse Seal, and weird birds' head masks. Yikes.
  • And then they took it one step further with the Dangerous Day video. HO-LEE SHIT.
  • Music for Pleasure Music for Pain as a whole is arguably the band's darkest album, from its' strong use of profanity to its' harder, Hip-Hop influence, and in the case of "Murderer" and "Benefits of Hypnotism", the usual Villain Protagonists being a lot nastier and depraved than usual. It makes even the more sinister moments of Spiders and 50ft Kebab seem cuddly in comparison. Younger or more sensitive listeners may want to skip this one.
• Moment of Awesome: Jamie coming back for the 2023 Spiders/Tin Planet anniversary. At the Liverpool gig of the tour, Mike Badger of the La's (who also did the artwork for Tin Planet) came onstage to do 'Piggies'. Jamie was positively starstruck at getting to play alongside one of his childhood heroes.
• Old Shame: Prior to its' release, Tommy cockily announced to the press that Tin Planet was 'the greatest pop album of the last 20 years', a quote he has since admitted as 'him disappearing up his own arse'. The band as a whole have no fond memories of recording (or at least trying to record) Love You More Than Football.
• Signature Song: 'Female Of The Species'. 'Neighbourhood', 'Me & You Vs The World' and 'The Ballad Of Tom Jones' are runners up.
• Stylistic Suck: A lot of their music videos fall into this, especially the ones for "Dark Clouds" and "Suburban Rock 'N' Roll".
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: unlike Spiders and Tin Planet, Suburban Rock 'n' Roll was not well-received by critics despite being a fan favourite with those who heard it, and sold very poorly. It didn't help that much of the fandom had grown tired of waiting for a new album and had moved on.
• Uncertain Audience: According to Word of God, the band's tendency to switch genres with each release proved confusing for whose who preferred their more indie or more electronic-based stuff, which they believe is what held them back from achieving consistent success.
• Vindicated by History: Arguably the band themselves. In the years following their commercial heyday, Space were considered by many to be a joke group, and were only ever brought up in magazines (usually regarding the Britpop scene) just so they could make a point on how terrible they were. However, since their reunion, public reception has started to become a lot kinder, with leading hipster magazine Pitchfork ranking Spiders amongst their top 50 Britpop albums (even though the band never really associate themselves with the genre).
• What the Hell Is That Accent?: Tommy is known for putting different inflections on his voice when embodying the characters of his songs, which has led people to believe that it sounds like a Speedy Gonzales impression.