Strangers When We Meet

Is it not just about breaking up with someone and a nod to Angie?

I can see elements working with the theme of someone with dementia but it doesn't really all work. The "thin and frail" comment relates to "all our friends now seem so.. thin and frail" so I cannot see why people are relating this to the person he's singing to? Besides the attitude/delivery of the song is not to someone he loves who's battling a disease... it's a bitter account in my opinion. Anyway interesting theory but not for me.

I think it's the course of a breakup and how time affects the relationship and attitudes towards the person. Starting with the realisation that you're not in the right place or lifestyle anymore; all our friends now seem so thin and frail. Or with the right person; No trendy rush of faith, I'm with you so I can't go on.

The next stage is the post break-up getting over them. I think the "forget my name, but I'm over you" line might be a dig at Angie for keeping his name after their divorce.

The final part is being overjoyed at not knowing each other anymore and knowing you made the right decision.

Great song that ends a great album. Outside version is better than the original on buddha in my opinion as well, but I don't think it's a popular opinion who know both!

For me this song is about reincarnation and karma. The character has been in relationships with this girl through several lives, and gave her lots of pain and violence before. As he meets her again in this life, he remembers back, and at first this makes him resentful, but after that he feels really greatful and full of joy for they met again, as total strangers. So he was given a new chance to make a clean start with her again.

Well I think really, if you look a little closer, its about empty wanton liaisons arranged over the internet. Which I guess Bowie would have predicted even then. Towards the end of the song we see the 'steely resolve' to do it waning and it appears, like all wanton liasons, to be a bad idea that goes wrong. For instance there is no courting in this relationship, no trendy bar, a blank screen tv - usual for hotel rooms, the whirling room, clothes strewn, by the placements in the song we can perhaps see this was Bowie's focus. A brilliant piece of art. the reference to the opera Rheingold clinches it for me - which deals with the chase for unworldy love which is not ever there. It prefigures internet dating and how empty it is. And of course, in real human terms, all people who convene like this are strangers when they meet.

i think this i one of davids greatest an most epic songs. it s about him as an old, tired man, meeting a new girl and being glad, that she doesnt know anything about his future. so he is allowed to start all over again.

I think it is about two people who were together and in love, but parted. And it is the depth and sorrow of understanding the way people can connect intensely and then in a matter of time realize how we all change. It is the wavering between the state of remembering the closeness, longing for it, and then old resentment as well the distance that grows so shockingly quick.

If you look at the context of the song in the set of 1.Outside, you can see it as someone from Ramona's past coming across them at the height of their madness. Possibility being the person framed for the murder of Baby Grace Blue after his incarceration.

this is one of my favorite bowie songs. it has so much yearning, sadness, love, hope...

anyway, a couple of years ago i read some alternative interpretations of this song on a bowie board, and they just stuck with me, because they fit very well. one interp was that the lover that bowie is singing to has aids or alzheimer's or some other kind of terminal illness. the illness makes her drastically different physically and mentally ("thin and frail," "strangers when we meet"). she's dying, but she's not dead yet, so of course he "can't move on." her mind is getting weaker by the disease, and she "forgets his name." he's feeling conflicted by this disease, at once angry ("all my violence"), "bewildered," and "resentful." sometimes he just wishes to forget her and be "over her," and her "embrace was all that he feared" because he is afraid of becoming ill just like her. but at last he reconciles his love for her, and continues to love her, despite the bruises he has sustained emotionally, and he's ultimately thankful that she's still alive.

i just thought this was a fascinating interpretation that really, really works.

To me, it's about somebody unlucky in love finding new love, but fears his past. He's happy she doesn't know what a fuckup he's been, but he still knows it, and it'll probably end up wrecking this relationship as well. That's probably why the music on the surface feels happy, but has a menacing undercurrent as well. The good times will only last so long, then comes the break up.

Likely about his marriage to Angie Bowie.

For starters, it's easy to tell it's about an unfortunate split from ones partner. I feel like the singer here is struggling to come to terms with himself, trying to make the whole thing work, but it's just not happening. About halfway through the song I feel he comes to terms with himself.

I only feel this way due to lyrics like, 'I'm bewildered, for we're strangers when we meet', and 'I'm resentful, for we're strangers when we meet'. You can see his feelings about the relationship are changing over time.

One reason I feel this piece could be about his relationship with Angie is in the seventh verse, 'dazzled by the new', one of the lyrics pointing to their open relationship. Perhaps, in the midst of being with someone else, he realized how much happier he would be in a fully committed relationship with someone that truly cared about him.

Another could be the last line in the eighth verse, 'we trade by vendu', vendu being an open auction. Both of them are trying out new things, interested in other people.

The singer is overall coming to terms with his restlessness of the relationship he's in, and he's grown sick of feeling unsatisfied in his relationship. This doesn't even begin to go into detail with the whole song.

if you listen closely in the version on The Buddha of Suburbia you'll hear a very similar background guitar theme to that of the song Look Back In Anger.

also, the bassline at the beginning is the same as the bassline at 1:11 into the 1967 song Join The Gang