"Heroes" - The best song ever made.

So I want to discuss the song "Heroes" by David Bowie and make my case for why it is easily the best Bowie song, possibly the best song of all time, and how it represents the subjectivity of art in a really interesting way. So let's dive right in.

David Bowie's Best

First, I need to discuss the song within the context of Bowie's discography. Now, Bowie has a lot of great songs - he's a legend after all - so the claim that this is Bowie's best song is a big claim in and of itself, let alone the claim that it is easily his best or that it is the best song of all time. So why do I claim that so confidently?

Let's start with the fact that the instrumental is so perfectly conflicted, interesting, and powerful. The guitar that screeches in the distance like an air raid siren above the steady and secure drum beat and bassline. The second guitar that comes in with a catchy lick that sounds like a glimmer of hope... There's this perfect balance to the contrasting elements, and a comfort amongst a relatively bleak soundscape that makes this song a masterpiece regardless of Bowie's vocal performance.

Thankfully though, he didn't phone it in. Instead, he gave us the most impactful performance of his life. When it comes to the vocals on this song, it's all about the way it builds. We'll get into lyrics in a moment, but regardless of your interpretation, the vocal performance grounds it in some sense of reality and gives the song it's stakes. The way it begins almost conversationally and gradually becomes a desperate, begging yelp to his lover turns it into an operatic blend of acting a role and performing a song and that is yet another way this song is exceptional even amongst the most exceptional songs within an exceptional artist's discography.

Then there are his lyrics...

A Lyrical Rorschach Test

My favourite thing about "Heroes" is the fact that it's so open to interpretation. I have heard several people talk about their interpretations of this masterpiece, and every single person has had an at least slightly different take on the meaning, with almost all being valid readings as far as I could tell. And usually something this open-ended tends to sacrifice poignancy to that end, but here, it's hard to imagine a more poignant version of the song. In fact, I think the ambiguity only adds to it.

Some of this comes down to that conflicted instrumental I wrote about in the previous section, but a lot of it is to do with the lyrics. On a less important level, there are the aesthetic interpretations. This is basically in terms of the context of the struggle of the song. Essentially it comes down to "is this a relationship that exists within a warzone or a warzone that exists within a relationship?". It isn't really that impactful to the meaning of the song, but it does change things slightly, to either make it about fighting something external or something internal. It's spice to the meaning, and there is some variation in what people think about it.

This is the more interesting bit to me though: the balance of hope and dread. Does the narrator here believe that one "win" - this one heroic day - is a domino amongst many that will lead to sustained positive change, or the one thing they need to be able to end it (whatever that "it" refers to) in peace, knowing they went down swinging?

That is a very macro view of things, but you could do this for almost every line. I had this idea for a post after my brother and I went through the lyrics with differing interpretations on the lyrics, going line by line explaining what that line means to us and how it relates to our overall view on the meaning of the song. He had an interpretation akin to the domino one I mentioned previously, where one good day can prove to them that they can become better people (that is my recollection at least, I can't quite remember if he thought the allusions to conflict were metaphorical), and my interpretation was essentially that it's a desperate man's hopeful plea to his significant other for one more chance at this doomed and mutually destructive relationship. Every. Single. Line. Was followed by an agreement that each of our interpretations were, not just supported by the lyrics, but equally valid and cast-iron interpretations.

I had already heard a few examples, but this prompted me to ask others what their interpretation of this song was, and again, everyone had a slightly different, valid view and it was so intriguing to hear them all.

The Perfect Work of Art

If you thought the previous sections were pretentious, just you wait, I'm about to get downright insufferable.

I think "Heroes" is the perfect work of art. And I don't use the word "perfect" lightly at all. I'm extremely hesitant to use it, but it is just hard to deny it's suitability here. This song excels at everything that you want art to excel at, and that list is very contradictory, so that's no easy task. Much like trying to define what art should be, which I'm going to try to do here, but don't take it too seriously, this is just a blog post from a painfully autistic music nerd.

The main thing for me is that art should speak to something powerfully human. The best thing you can experience with art is the feeling you've been seen on some core level. That the art is showing you something about yourself that is buried so deep that no society has even found the words required to uncover it. I think it's safe to say that "Heroes" accomplishes this. The desperation to cling onto connection is something that I think everyone can relate to on some level, and when you mix it with the dumb hope and desire to try something that seems doomed just because it feels wrong to do anything else, and you've got a very human reaction to hardship. Despite how often we tell ourselves that we could never go on living if this happened, how often we tell ourselves we're doomed if that happened, when actually confronted with hardship on that scale we can be beautifully dumb and illogical, clinging to a ship no matter how submerged it may be. And "Heroes", I feel, captures that stubborn hope excellently.

In addition to speaking to something powerfully human, I think art is at it's best when its open to interpretation. It allows the experience mentioned above to happen to multiple people, or even in multiple different ways to the same person, uncovering a new core element of the same person's being each time they pay attention to the art. I've already talked at length about how much the song excels at this point, but I can't express enough how this song has the most valid interpretations of a song that I have ever seen. It is truly exceptional in that area.

The Death of the Author

As some of you will be aware, the death of the author is an stance regarding interpretations of art that argues that once a given work is released, the author of that work is, for all intents and purposes as it regards interpretations of their work, dead. Essentially, the person reading their book, watching their movie, listening to their song, decides what that work means. The author can have a say, but their say means no more than anyone else's.

With that in mind, I would like to make a rare call-to-action here. I know, calls-to-action are icky, I hate them too, but this isn't about going viral, I promise. I just want to hear your interpretation of the song. You can do that in any way you would like, whether that's via the comments here, Tumblr, Bluesky, the contact form at the bottom of the site, wherever. I just really want to hear your thoughts!