Wondering what the song is in the new 2026 TurboTax commercial? Discover Shiny Toy Guns’ cover of ‘Major Tom’ and the deep meaning behind the astronaut metaphor.
It’s tax season, and for America’s business owners, the experience often feels like being lost in deep space, drifting without a signal from Planet Earth. At least, that’s the feeling TurboTax is trying to alleviate with its widespread 2026 advertising campaign. Central to this narrative is a song that many recognize but few can quite place—a track centered on a famous fictional astronaut who changed the course of rock history.
TurboTax is currently saturating the advertising landscape for obvious seasonal reasons. Tax filing season is a unique window for brands to release commercials that stick, and this year, the company is attacking from multiple angles. Leading the charge is the Super Bowl spot featuring Adrien Brody, who brings his signature artistic intensity to the screen, refusing to be just another “anonymous actor” following a script without creativity. Then there is the more recent integration featuring WWE stars LA Knight, Stephanie Vaquer, and Penta, targeting a high-energy, mainstream audience.
However, the most searched-for advertisement of the moment is a different beast entirely. It features no Hollywood A-listers or professional athletes; instead, it relies on a song so atmospheric and effective that it has sent viewers racing to find its title. Today, we explore the improbable link between the 2026 TurboTax commercial and Major Tom, the iconic character created by David Bowie and later borrowed by generations of artists, right up to the modern day.
Lost in the Void: Major Tom, the Song in the 2026 TurboTax Commercial
The Intuit TurboTax commercial, featuring a small business owner feeling overwhelmed in front of their tablet, hits its peak at the very moment a solution arrives: an ethereal female voice sings a song that mirror the weightless, often isolating sensations experienced by those filing their taxes this season:
Earth below us
Drifting, falling
Floating, weightless
Calling home…
These lyrics are from a 2009 track titled “Major Tom (Coming Home)” by the American rock band Shiny Toy Guns. You can listen to the full version in the official video below.
While not everyone may have immediately recognized Shiny Toy Guns’ retro-futuristic rendition, the figure of Major Tom himself is familiar to almost everyone. He is the legendary astronaut at the center of one of David Bowie’s most iconic rock masterpieces, “Space Oddity.”
Specifically, Major Tom was a character created by David Bowie in 1969, later revived by German singer Peter Schilling in 1983. It was Schilling’s version—a synth-pop sequel of sorts—that Shiny Toy Guns eventually covered for their 2009 release.
The Psychology of Drifting: Are We All Major Tom?
In all three songs, Major Tom is an astronaut struggling to maintain contact with Ground Control as technical failures begin to compromise his spacecraft. David Bowie’s original lyrics have since become a part of cultural history:
This is Major Tom to Ground Control
I’m stepping through the door
And I’m floating in a most peculiar way
And the stars look very different today
In the mythic interaction envisioned by Bowie, the astronaut peacefully surrenders to his fate, seemingly without fear. He is the one who opens the airlock to the infinite void, and from there, he gazes back at the Earth—blue, distant, and beautiful. The sensation, however, is that Major Tom is happy exactly where he is, having uttered his final words to his home planet. It is the story of a space mission with an unexpected ending; there is a profound irony in the fact that this was one of the songs selected by the BBC for its moon landing broadcast, which aired just days after the single’s release.
In the versions by Peter Schilling and Shiny Toy Guns, Major Tom is similarly presented as a man content to lose himself in the stars. “Send me up a drink,” he says in the lines immediately preceding the chorus. Then come the words featured in the TurboTax commercial, including the phrase “calling home”—an expression that has been widely debated since Schilling’s version debuted in 1983.
Many interpret Major Tom’s “calling home” as he drifts further into the void not as a final message to Earth, but as a realization that he is feeling the natural pull of his true home: the cosmos. Major Tom belongs to the sky, and in every iteration of his story, it feels only right that his journey ends there.
Why the Song Works for TurboTax
Of course, American business owners shouldn’t have to feel like Major Tom, isolated in the dark silence of space. With the new TurboTax tools, they have the support they need to ensure they always stay in touch with Ground Control—and with the tax office, for that matter.
This is exactly why the new advertisement is so effective. By utilizing a song that everyone is currently searching for, the tax assistance tool resonates with the disorienting sensations felt by entrepreneurs, only to offer a definitive solution. It acts as an awakening from a bad dream: no, you are not Major Tom, and you are not drifting through space. After all, you have a business to run tomorrow…
