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Outside Lyrics
Now. Not tomorrow
Yesterday
Not tomorrow
It happens today
The damage today
They fall on today
They beat on the outside
And I'll stand by you
Now. Not tomorrow
It's happening now
Not tomorrow
It's happening now
The crazed in the hot-zone
The mental and diva's hands
The fisting of life
To the music outside
To the music outside
It happens outside
The music is outside
It's happening outside
The music is outside
It's happening, now
Not tomorrow
Yesterday
Not tomorrow
The music is outside
It's happening outside
The music is outside
The music is outside
Outside
Outside
Outside
Yesterday
Not tomorrow
It happens today
The damage today
They fall on today
They beat on the outside
And I'll stand by you
Now. Not tomorrow
It's happening now
Not tomorrow
It's happening now
The crazed in the hot-zone
The mental and diva's hands
The fisting of life
To the music outside
To the music outside
It happens outside
The music is outside
It's happening outside
The music is outside
It's happening, now
Not tomorrow
Yesterday
Not tomorrow
The music is outside
It's happening outside
The music is outside
The music is outside
Outside
Outside
Outside
Song Info
Submitted by
saturnine On May 02, 2004
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Outside is actually a reworking of a song performed by Tin Machine as early as 1989. Dara O'Kearney wrote the following in alt.fan.david-bowie :
The tune was written as early as 1989, and played on the Tin Machine tour of the same year. For example, at Kilburn, Bowie introduced it as 'a new song, we haven't finished the lyrics for it yet, for now it's called Now". The song then starts off with the intro of Look Back In Anger (which was cut from the tune when it became Outside), followed by the familiar start (to Outside), and then Bowie starts singing the lyrics. Same as for Outside (Now, not tomorrow, yesterday, not tomorrow, it's happening now etc.) until the part of Outside where he sings "The music is outside" where in Now he sings something like "Oh I love you, oh I need you" and sounds very unconvinced by the lyrics.
After finishing the song, bowie said "Right, now we'll have to finish it for the next album", which they never did of course (until 1. Outside)
this is one of my all time fav. bowie songs. and its off of my fav. bowie album. Outside. an amazing concept album.
isn't this a revision of the Tin Machine song "Now?" it's definitely been tailored to the Outside album, and i'm sure the dates being recited in the bsckground have some significance, but i am too lazy to look them up...
If the 90's was David's more-or-less Lost Decade (Little Wonder, anyone?), the album Outside is a big exception. It's one of the top 20 Concept Albums of all time. Certainly some sort of dystopia is presented. And outside is David's best 90's composition - that and Baby Universal.
This song is a summation of the whole album. What David is saying is that the dystopian world presented in Outside is happening at the present moment, it’s not some futuristic fiction like Brave New World but rather like Animal Farm by Orwell. It’s a terrifying masterpiece, severely underrated.
“In interviews, Bowie remarked that the album was meant to reflect the anxiety of the last five years of the millennium, saying "Overall, a long-term ambition is to make it a series of albums extending to 1999”