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7/30/14 - Millennials Can Be Heroes

"Heroes" (styled with double quotation marks) is a song written by David Bowie and Brian Eno in 1977. Produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti, it was released both as a single and as the title track of the album "Heroes". A product of Bowie's fertile 'Berlin' period, life in the city was crystallized into a tale of two lovers who come together in the shadow of the 'Wall of Shame' (though here "the shame was on the other side"). While not a huge hit in the UK or US at the time, "Heroes" has gone on to become one of Bowie's signature songs and is well known today for its appearance in numerous advertisements. It has been cited as Bowie's second most covered song after "Rebel Rebel".[2]

It was the lead track on Peter Gabriel's 2010 covers album, Scratch My Back. Among other notable covers, The Wallflowers recorded a version of the song for the soundtrack to the film Godzilla. This version peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1998, as well as number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart, and number 23 on the Billboard Top 40 Mainstream charts.[3]In the UK, the final sixteen acts from the seventh series of The X Factor released a cover version of the song on 21 November 2010 which topped the UK singles chart.

Inspiration and recording[edit]

The title of the song is a reference to the 1975 track "Hero" by the German band Neu!,[4] whom Bowie and Eno admired. It was one of the early tracks recorded during the album sessions, but remained an instrumental until towards the end of production.[2] The quotation marks in the title of the song, a deliberate affectation, were designed to impart an ironic quality on the otherwise highly romantic, even triumphant, words and music.[5][6][7][8] Producer Tony Visconti took credit for inspiring the image of the lovers kissing "by the wall", when he and backing vocalist Antonia Maaß embraced in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window.[9]Bowie's habit in the period following the song's release was to say that the protagonists were based on an anonymous young couple but Visconti, who was married to Mary Hopkin at the time, contends that Bowie was protecting him and his affair with Maaß. Bowie confirmed this in 2003.[2]

The music, co-written by Bowie and Eno, has been likened to a Wall of Sound production, an undulating juggernaut of guitars, percussion and synthesizers.[9] Eno has said that musically the piece always "sounded grand and heroic" and that he had "that very word - heroes - in my mind" even before Bowie wrote the lyrics.[2] The basic backing track on the recording consists of a conventional arrangement of piano, bass guitar, rhythm guitar and drums. However the remaining instrumental additions are highly distinctive. These largely consist of synthesizer parts by Eno using an EMS VCS3 to produce detuned low-frequency drones, with the beat frequencies from the three oscillators producing a juddering effect. In addition, King Crimson guitaristRobert Fripp generated an unusual sustained sound by allowing his guitar to feed back and sitting at different positions in the room to alter the pitch of the feedback (pitched feedback). Tony Visconti rigged up a system, a creative misuse of gating that may be termed "multi-latch gating",[10] of three microphones to capture the epic vocal, with one microphone nine inches from Bowie, one 20 feet away and one 50 feet away. Only the first was opened for the quieter vocals at the start of the song, with the first and second opening on the louder passages, and all three on the loudest parts, creating progressively more reverb and ambience the louder the vocals became.[11] Each microphone is muted as the next one is triggered. "Bowie's performance thus grows in intensity precisely as ever more ambience infuses his delivery until, by the final verse, he has to shout just to be heard....The more Bowie shouts just to be heard, in fact, the further back in the mix Visconti's multi-latch system pushes his vocal tracks, creating a stark metaphor for the situation of Bowie's doomed lovers".[12]

Release and aftermath[edit]

"Heroes" was released in a variety of languages and lengths ("a collector's wet dream" in the words of NME editors Roy Carr and Charles Shaar Murray[5]). In contrast to the bewildering audio situation, the video (directed by Stanley Dorfman)[13] was a stark and simple affair, the singer captured performing the song in what appeared to be a single take with multiple cameras, swaying in front of a spotlight that created a monotone and near-silhouette effect. Despite a large promotional push, including Bowie's first live Top of the Pops appearance since 1973,[9] "Heroes" only reached number 24 in the UK charts, and failed to make the US Billboard Hot 100. In Italy, the song was certified gold by the Federation of the Italian Music Industry.[14]

In February 1999, Q Magazine listed "Heroes" as one of the 100 greatest singles of all time as voted by the readers. In March 2005, the same magazine placed it at number 56 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. In 2004, Rolling Stone rated "Heroes" number 46 in its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. It was included in 2008's The Pitchfork Media 500: Our Guide to the Greatest Songs from Punk to the Present. John J. Miller of National Review rated "Heroes" number 21 on a list of "the 50 greatest conservative rock songs".[15] Uncut placed "Heroes" as number 1 in its 30 greatest Bowie songs in 2008.[citation needed]