David Bowie: 'Heroes' Meaning

Song Released: 1977

'Heroes' Lyrics

I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing, nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, for ever and ever
Oh we can be Heroes,
just for one day

I, I will be king
And you, you will be...

1. anonymous

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   Jun 21st 2021 !⃝

   I am a huge Bowie fan and heard in many interviews that Bowie made the song about 2 lovers separated by the Berlin Wall. One lover on south and the other on west. The people who he mentioned kissing by the wall heard gun shots so the song was about the protest and the Berlin Wall because Bowie was living in Berlin at the time with Iggy Pop in there apartment together so Bowie was very much apart of the Berlin Wall. The lovers were anonymous until bowie stated that it was Tony Visconti his music producer and manager. Bowie did not say he was the lover until later because he was married at the time and was cheating on his wife with the lover on the south side of the wall. More about this song is that Bowie was performing near the Berlin Wall a concert singing heroes and people started to protest, the police stopped them and then a couple days later more protest happened then the Berlin Wall was gone. Some of the Berlin Wall protesters were big bowie fans. Bowie has been a huge part of history.
2. anonymous

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   Feb 8th 2019 !⃝

   My friend told me almost 40 years ago that it was about doing Heroin!?

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
3. anonymous

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   Feb 21st 2018 !⃝

   It's about Bowie's dear friend John Lennon struggling with suppressing his fame and making a comeback with or without Yoko. (Bowie never really wanted to reveal the true meaning of this song, out respect for his friend who was still alive at the time and decided to keep it that way years after his death.)

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
4. anonymous

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   Aug 22nd 2017 !⃝

   A awesome song that for me could also be about the positive side of being a ''Narcissistic Nihillist'' in Love to escape with The Other. Forgoing headlong in The Transformation to Overcome the death of our false ego selves. All in order to obtain ''The Awe Of ""NOTHINGNESS'' that will keep us together and become the ''Heroes'' that overcame ourselves. Even if it was/is just for one day that was made for us to reach the other side and feel the meaning of True Freedom.
5. heronsysnj

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   Jul 29th 2017 !⃝

   I'd love to take credit for this, but it came from an interview with David. Considering that he was recording in Berlin, the song is a true story about two East German lovers. Constrained and crushed by the Communist Dictatorship, they take a crazy risk to perform their own ritual of freedom: they meet in the shade of the Berlin Wall and make love there. The Guards see them and, in a silent message of support, fire over their heads instead of at them.
6. anonymous

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   Feb 12th 2016 !⃝

   It's about The Berlin Wall and two lovers on either side.
7. 655alive

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   Jun 30th 2015 !⃝

   The fact that it is in quotations is important. Almost every personae represented on the album is someone who made wrong turns or bad course in life (ie. Sons of the Silent Age or Joe the Lion). This is the single version-not the full album version-and omits the lines: And you, you can be mean
   And I, I'll drink all the time
   'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact
   Yes we're lovers, and that is that
   
   Sort of smacks of the pessimism Bowie sometimes expressed towards the buttoned-down married life (ie. Repetition)-something he may've overcome. However, Bowie in 2003 claims the affair of Tony Visconti and Antonia Maas were the main inspiration.
8. anonymous

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   Sep 3rd 2014 !⃝

   Heroes by David Bowie
   
   If you heard this song today, you can be a hero today.
   
   If you hear this song tomorrow, it can inspire you to be a hero for that day.
   
   On any day that you hear this song, you can be a hero 'just for one day'.
9. anonymous

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   Aug 20th 2014 !⃝

   I believe the song refers to two people being in love during a time of war or during a difficult time and how they wish for life to be better and more liberating than it is.

   This interpretation has been marked as poor. view anyway
10. kooljohn176

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    Nov 10th 2013 !⃝

    amazing the way bowie is using the [I,i,and king] as metaphors for playing to the superego to guide the ego and the self thru the two lovers that inspired him by the berlin wall, that actually can also be himself that was inspired in trying to feel the pain and suffering in the aftermath of the war that left people lost and divided. ''heroes'' is one hopeful and passionate song of the late 70's that captured my alien-American imagination that this song spoke to me in freedom of dreaming in becoming into something that is bigger than ourselves in finding and holding to love even to the cost of pushing our minds to the edge of our false ego and pride to dissintegrate to death for the peak experience of feeling above human for a moment in the ''oneness'' of coming together into ourselves to become our own hero in the making without revenge or violence against anybody. the lovers who want to be free like the dolphins can swim freely and only in ''nothing'' their is ''oneness'' that can keep them together in seeing the wall fall around them while they kiss.

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