When We Meet Again We Re Just Strangers
Strangers When We Meet (promo mix).
Strangers When We Run across (Buddha of Suburbia).
Strangers When We Meet (Outside.)
Strangers When We Run across (single edit, video, Outside).
Strangers When Nosotros Meet (live, 1995).
Strangers When We Meet (The Tonight Evidence, 1995).
Strangers When Nosotros Encounter (Superlative of the Pops, 1995).
Strangers When We Meet (Later with Jools The netherlands, 1995).
"Strangers When We Meet" appears on two Bowie albums, neither of which it suited. On Buddha of Suburbia, its first, sparser incarnation stood out as the most "standard" track of the record, though it sounded undercooked when compared with the effulgence of "Untitled No. ane." Realizing that he'd thrown abroad a possible hitting on an album that wasn't released in the US, Bowie reworked "Strangers" in the final sessions of Outside, for which it served every bit the closing runway.
On Outside, the bright chorus melody of "Strangers" was a payoff for a listener who had endured a long, dark, claustrophobic album. Coming after a gear up of eighteen "segues" and generally ominous tracks, "Strangers" felt like a boarded-up window being pried open up to let in the sunlight. That said, "Strangers" also sounded similar a bonus track, like something appended to the album after it was used in a film.
"Strangers" seems at heart i of Bowie'due south transient songs, i more suited for the stateless company of "Holy Holy," "John, I'm But Dancing," "Under Force per unit area" and "Alabama Vocal" than information technology was for whatever anthology. Information technology was a pure unmarried that Bowie instead netted and mounted in two unlike tableaux. And while it felt like a hit, "Strangers" wound up a relative obscurity. Released as Exterior's 2nd single, it was eclipsed by its B-side, a so-called "live" version (it wasn't) of "Man Who Sold the World." "Strangers" but reached #39 in the UK and didn't chart anywhere else in the world but Sweden. Had it been Outside's lead-off single, or had Bowie put it out ahead of the album in, say, bound 1995, perhaps it could've had more space to thrive in.
Its commercial failure was a shame, as "Strangers" has ane of Bowie's sturdiest melodies and about haunting lyrics of his later years. It should have been ranked with "Absolute Beginners" and "Modern Dearest" as one of Bowie's beloved "silver age" hits; "Strangers," rather than "Jump They Say," feels like it should accept been the terminal big Bowie pop moment. Perhaps it was likewise somber for its fourth dimension; the doomed, conflicted human relationship that dominates its lyric denying any easy admission for a listener.
"Strangers" began every bit another of Bowie's trawls through the past while he was making Buddha, as the vocal is built on the bassline of the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'" (which Bowie had already used, jokingly, in his "Join the Gang"). Bowie was also playing with the associations that its championship phrase summoned upwardly. "Strangers when nosotros meet" was associated with adultery: it had titled a Kirk Douglas film nearly tortured adultery and had been the chorus hook of Leroy Van Dyke's jaunty ode to adultery, "Walk on Past" ("just walk on by/look on the corner/I honey you but nosotros're strangers when we see"). In all its uses, the secret lovers in question had to play-human action as strangers in public, reserving their true feelings for behind closed doors.The Smithereens had a song in the Eighties that connected these associations—don't look my way, I've however got a wife, I actually love you, retrieve, simply we're going to be strangers on the street.
And then Bowie's lyric took this set of expectations and undermined them. Rather than being whatever sort of secret lovers, the couple in the song are so brutally alienated from each other, are so consumed by passive/ambitious emotional violence, that they often literally cannot recognize who they one time were. At that place'southward an emotional numbness, with the singer'southward world bled costless of color. "All our friends, now seem so sparse and frail," Bowie begins. The TV shows a blank screen, religion has no consolations, nor does nature ("fantabulous sunrise, but information technology'due south a dying globe"). Sometimes the couple fifty-fifty forget each other's names. The man weeps in bed, cringes when she tries to comprehend him.
The twist is, as the terminal chorus comes around, that the singer masochistically welcomes this country. Numbness, disassociation, breach are at least some sort of feeling. Better to serve in hell, as the line goes. As the end chorus begins, with the beat slightly increasing in tempo, Bowie tears into his lines with a sudden, growing conviction. ALL your REGRETS ride ROUGH-SHOD over me, he sings. I'm so GLAD…I'grand then THANKFUL…I'm in CLOVER…HEEL HEAD OVER that they're strangers. Because then they tin pretend to fall in beloved again.
Bowie didn't alter the song'south structure when he remade information technology for Outside. "Strangers" remained a standard progression in A major, with the verses banked to quickly sweep in the dominant chord, E, ("secrets") later on a tense pit stop on a B eleventh chord ("sparse and frail"). The choruses reverse course, beginning on East ("violence") and chop-chop shuttling back habitation to the tonic, A ("the sheet").
The revisions were more subtle, and owed to the greater bandage of characters in the studio: Mike Garson, ofttimes keeping to the bass end of his pianoforte, offers small commentary and a lovely, ruminative solo; Reeves Gabrels discards the agitated, jabbing hook in the original track's verses for a set of subtler colors (he also provides a few what-the-hell noises, like the Fripp-esque "elephant roar" in the intro). Kizilcay on bass plays a similar groove equally his functioning on the original (it's also perchance Yossi Fine on bass hither) while the drumming, whether Sterling Campbell or Joey Businesswoman, is more dynamic. (The revision moved "Strangers" from the dance floor to a locked room, especially given the macerated presence of the synth drum "march" design that had been the backbone of the Buddha version.)
For me, the Exterior version'due south superiority lies mainly in Bowie's vocal. His singing on the remake seems an extended critique of his before performance. The original establish Bowie potent, confident, in full form as "Bowie," happily delivering on expectations. The double-tracked close harmonies of the chorus emphasized the hearty strengths of its melody and Bowie took the endmost lines as a series of hurdles, delighting in his rhymes, bringing the vocal to a close as if he was landing a plane. On Exterior, this bravado has fallen abroad. Bowie begins in a nearly-conversational tone, in what sounds like his "gumshoe" Nathan Adler voice—he's interim, playing a ridiculous role, and in the beginning chorus he breaks downwards. His emphases country on unexpected beats: he sings "strangers when we meet" now, letting the last word trail off—it gives a more provisional feel to the line, the singer fixating on the "when," knowing that they may never meet again. And in the closing chorus, the naked dazzler of his voice (accompanied by a ghostly, lower-mixed backing vocal) makes the climactic lines a serial of painful, difficult-fought delusions.
It'southward one of his finest, most beautiful, autumnal songs—Bowie would spend his some of his concluding decade equally a performer (well, until this past Tuesday) playing variations of the character, someone betrayed and bewildered by life, that he unveiled on "Strangers." Whether he ever bettered it is another question.
Recorded: (original) June-July 1993, Mountain Studios, Montreux; (remake) ca. January-February 1995, Westside Studios, New York. A longer, different mix of the original "Strangers" appeared on a Dutch promotional cassette—its virtually notable differences are the lack of the "Gimme Some Lovin'" hook and a greater emphasis on the synth drums. The remake of "Strangers was released in November 1995 every bit RCA/BMG 74321 32940 2 (c/w "Man Who Sold the Globe," #39 UK—the United kingdom CD single as well had "Get Real," one of ii "official" Outside outtakes.) Performed on the Outside and Earthling tours as well as on the Tonight Bear witness on 27 Oct 1995, TOTP on ix November 1995 and Jools The netherlands on 3 December 1995.
Top: "Allison DC," "Anarchism Grrrls, Gay Rights March," Washington DC, April 1993.
Source: https://bowiesongs.wordpress.com/2013/01/10/strangers-when-we-meet/
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