“Heroes” (1977)

The middle child of the Berlin Trilogy, “Heroes” directly follows the mold of Low in its split-down-the-middle construction — side one features Bowie in art-rock mode, side two is mostly instrumental soundscapes. The largest difference: “Heroes” winds up sounding more traditional, partly because the shock of the new when first encountering Low had already blasted sensibilities to hell, but also because the ‘rock half’ feels fleshed out in a way that the jagged scraps on the first half of Low did not. Instead, “Heroes” gives us lacerating lead guitars played by King Crimson’s Robert Fripp, and an overall more optimistic approach to Bowie’s new Berlin sound. Speaking of Berlin, this is the only one of the three Berlin records that was fully recorded in Berlin, go figure. The second half of the record, as on Low, is mostly instrumental, and leaning heavily on free-form ambient experiments co-written with everyone’s favorite bald man, Brian Eno. The tone of the record comes off lighter, less claustrophobic, if still plenty playful and experimental — either the drugs were starting to clear his system (the previous record was written during an attempted detox), or Bowie had found something new to dull the pain. But at the end of the day, “Heroes” will always be remembered for its soaring title track, with its unforgettable image of doomed lovers kissing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall (the quotation marks were added to the name to defuse the overt romanticism of that image). Despite all the studio trickery and effects magic employed (read about the recording of “Heroes” in serious, nerd-baiting depth here), at its core, it’s just a simple looping progression with a mind-blowing vocal from Bowie delivering a perfect lyric. That said, there must have been magic in that room, because no one since has been able to turn in a worthy cover (lookin’ at you, Wallflowers).