New Killer Star

Perhaps "New Killer" is a play on the mispronunciation of nuclear?

awesome.

great song!

a lot of 9/11 references lay around regarding this song "great white scar", missiles, different things like that. " i got a better way" i know a better way to solve this problem than war? its not a very clear theory but not a bad one...

anyone know what ' like seeing jesus on dateline ' means?

that's such a cool lyric

you know, i think that in the "(...)" parts, they said "i discovered a star".

ggaaoo, I thought the same thing ;)

I don't know what the hell this song is talking about but DUDE it's such a great track! Okay, I lie, I got a few ideas from reading this page but ya'know, the guy's pretty cryptic when it comes to writing songs and a lazy bum like me isn't clever enough to decipher it.

I agree with you all in the 9/11 references. New Killer Star is from "Reality", from 2003. So it makes sense.

There`s a couple of details that I love about this song:

• In "I never said I'm better, I'm better, I'm better than you", there`s an irony which he says he isn't better, but the repetition changes completely the meaning. He talks a lot about differences between religions, and in those times one side always though it was better than the other, though no one says in public. I think this part reflect this.

• "Let`s Face the Music And Dance" is a beautiful song by Erving Berlin, and the chorus is:

There may be trouble ahead But while there's music and moonlight and love and romance Let's face the music and dance

maybe a message of hope in such difficult times of intolerance.

That's it, and sorry for my English, I'm Brazilian.

I've listened to many different versions to try and see if it's just on the original, but I keep hearing it even MORE in live versions-- the way Bowie sings "All the corners of the buildings/ Who but we remember these" (and sometimes a few lines following) sounds like he's doing a parody of an Southern American accent.

It kind of sounds to me like he's doing a Bush impression? You can especially hear it when he says "buildings" in live performances; it's just such a weird way to say it, yet he consistently sings it the same way. This combined with things I've read online lead me to believe the song is a criticism on how Bush handled 9/11. Bush was infamous for pronouncing "nuclear" the wrong way, and the title (as people have pointed out) is pretty much a play on this mispronunciation.

The "ready, set, go" lines evoke the image of a race, and could be about what many people believe was Bush's rush to invade Iraq.

"I got a better way" is sung right before "ready, set, go"-- perhaps it's showing that Bush didn't consider other "better" options?

"I discovered a star" could be Bush's claim that there were WMD in Iraq-- a few lines later, the line is swapped with "a new killer star" which probably means nuclear weapons.

"Oh, my idiot trance/ All my idiot questions" I think at this point it's a bit self-explanatory.

It's one of my favourite Bowie songs because its meaning is subtle yet it makes its point.