The Final Countdown

The Final Countdown was written by Joey Tempest and released in 1986 as the title track of the third album by the Swedish band Europe, formed in Upplands Väsby in 1979. The keyboard fanfare that opens it came from a demo Tempest had made years earlier on a borrowed synthesiser; the lyric, about leaving Earth for Venus, he traced to Bowie's Space Oddity. The band did not intend it as a single and thought it too long and too keyboard-heavy; it went to number one in around two dozen countries and has since been arranged for orchestra many times over.