"Heroes" by David Bowie // Song Review

- January 12, 2026

David Bowie's "Heroes" has gone on to become an anthem for the underdog, one that is dreamy, powerful and carries a message that has long transcended the circumstances of which it was originally written fifty years ago. Released in 1977, it has gone on to become one of the defining songs of his entire career and is a piece that has only grew in meaning as decades of listeners reinterpreted it for their own lives.

Written in Berlin, Bowie collaborated with Brian Eno, who provided the instrumentals for the track. In an interview for David Bowie: A Life by Dylan Jones, Brian Eno recalled his experience hearing the finished version for the first time. He said, "I was only involved in 'Heroes' to do the backing track. He wrote the lyrics and the melody after I'd left...And when I left, I already had a feeling about that track - it sounded grand and heroic. In fact, I had that very word in mind. And then David brought the finished album round to my place and that track came up and it said, 'We can be heroes' and I was absolutely ... it was such a strange feeling, you know. I just shivered."

"I, I will be king, and you, you will be queen," he sings in the opening lines of the song. "Though nothing will drive them away, we can beat them, just for one day".

What Bowie captured with this song is a the idea of being a hero even if you're only pretending to be one. There's a limitation built into that premise, but also a defiance to believe in yourself even when every odd is stacked against you. In a divided world, this sort of heroism isn't even rooted in any political grandiosity, but more so as a more personal and intimate feeling of letting yourself believe that hope still exists. "Though nothing, nothing will keep us together, we can beat them forever and ever, oh, we can be heroes, just for one day," he sings in the chorus.

For years he maintained that "Heroes" was inspired by a German couple he had watched meeting every day beneath a gun turret on the Berlin Wall. It is written with the striking imagery of two lovers risking everything to be together in a divided city. In a 2003 interview with Performing Songwriter Magazine, he revealed that the connection to this couple was far more personal, as he was actually depicting his producer Tony Visconti and backup singer Antonia Maass having an affair during their time living in Berlin and working on this album. With his producer being married, their relationship was always shadowed by the knowledge that it was fleeting and would never last. In the interview Bowie said, "I'm allowed to talk about it now. I wasn't at the time. I always said it was a couple of lovers by the Berlin Wall that prompted the idea. Actually, it was Tony Visconti and his girlfriend. Tony was married at the time. And I could never say who it was. But I can now say that the lovers were Tony and a German girl that he'd met whilst we were in Berlin. I did ask his permission if I could say that. I think possibly the marriage was in the last few months, and it was very touching because I could see that Tony was very much in love with this girl, and it was that relationship which sort of motivated the song."

Although the song was initially inspired by something so small and personal, its meaning has expanded far beyond that affair. Over time, it has become a vessel for countless interpretations and a symbol of resilience for listeners that have adapted it to their own lives. In a 1990 interview with Q Magazine, Bowie talked about the ways in which this song has evolved for him as well. "Recording something in a studio, and then putting it to a live audience, it becomes a different animal," he said. "I hadn't anticipated the way it would become that kind of anthemic thing. Now, of course, to play the thing is going to be rather odd because it's setting up a series of associations which are no more."

"Heroes" has been covered countless times through the years, by icons like Prince, Blondie, Lady Gaga, Coldplay, Oasis, St. Vincent, David Byrne, and many others. It's adaptability and continued cultural relevance is a part of what makes this song so special.

Perhaps the most famous interpretation of the track is by Peter Gabriel, who transformed it with a slow-building orchestral sound that takes the urgency of the original and changed the tone to something even more cinematic and almost mournful. Both the original Bowie version and the various covers released since by other artists have been used many times across decades of film and TV, everything from Glee to Regular Show as well as countless sporting events around the world. Peter Gabriel's version is notably used in both season one and season three of Stranger Things, with powerful tie ins to the themes of the series. In a full-circle moment, Bowie's original recording plays in its entirety over the credits of the series finale, which is a rare and powerful use of the full track that largely feels like a tribute to the song's enduring legacy.