Today’s Best Song Ever: David Bowie – Heathen (The Rays)

I read voraciously. Every book I ever bought, I have. I can’t throw it away. It’s physically impossible to leave my hand! Some of them are in warehouses. I’ve got a library that I keep the ones I really really like. I look around my library some nights and I do these terrible things to myself – I count up the books and think, how long I might have to live and think, ‚F@#%k, I can’t read two-thirds of these books.‘ It overwhelms me with sadness. – David Bowie 2002

‚Heathen‘ is about knowing you’re dying. It’s a song to life, where I’m talking to life as a friend or lover. I virtually couldn’t change a word the moment I sung it into a tape recorder. – David Bowie 2002

What’s your favorite song you ever wrote and is there a particular reason it’s the favorite?

David Bowie: Right now I would say the song „Heathen“. It came pouring out one morning at the studio up in Woodstock. I had little or no control over it. It had me in tears as I sang it. It felt like it was being plucked from my very being. An epiphany of sorts. It seems to be a summation of some kind and I think will become a personal milestone of some sort to me. It contains for me a strong indication of how beautiful and wonderful life is and how I regret that I will have to relinquish my hold upon it.

„He broke every time he performed this.“

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