The song to me is a wistful fantasy on the part of the singer about his (or her) desire for happiness and love despite their personal flaws and the world around the singer keeping him apart from the person he wishes to spend his life with.
Even then though reality breaks through into the singers fantasy though,, it can never really work out for the singer and the subject of his desires but he longingly asks for just one day to be together, to have what he wants and for maybe the whole thing to truly work out for him so he can have the life he longs for.
From there singer starts lamenting not living a more simple life where the strains and stresses they go through now would cease to be an issue. "I, I wish you could swim, like dolphins could swim" to me invokes an image of simple freedom, a wide open ocean to live in without the restraints people normally deal with, just travelling around with the person they care about.
This brings us back to the chorus which is again only fantasy, a simple little story where everything works out and the singer can be with the person they love.
Then we get more of a picture of how the singer ultimately interacts with their beloved, and its ultimately desperate and short lived, the lyrics invoke the image of war or a firing squad with them standing against a wall with guns being shot over their heads, implying on some level they mutually come together because of the harshness of the world towards them. With this and the next few lines I believe the song implies that the couple are in some kind of forbidden relationship, my mind immediately goes to them being either a gay couple or a racially mixed couple due to the time this song was released and David Bowie himself's personal experience as a bisexual man (at the time).
In the end the song sadly proclaims "We're nothing, and nothing will help us", the singer has accepted that they will never get what they want out of the romance and that maybe as implied before they aren't right for eachother anyway. At the same time though it ends on a hopeful note as the singer requests the "just one day" they had fantasized about previously, implying however slim a chance things could turn out the way the singer wanted them to, whether that is right or wrong is left to the listener.
The song to me is a wistful fantasy on the part of the singer about his (or her) desire for happiness and love despite their personal flaws and the world around the singer keeping him apart from the person he wishes to spend his life with.
Even then though reality breaks through into the singers fantasy though,, it can never really work out for the singer and the subject of his desires but he longingly asks for just one day to be together, to have what he wants and for maybe the whole thing to truly work out for him so he can have the life he longs for.
From there singer starts lamenting not living a more simple life where the strains and stresses they go through now would cease to be an issue. "I, I wish you could swim, like dolphins could swim" to me invokes an image of simple freedom, a wide open ocean to live in without the restraints people normally deal with, just travelling around with the person they care about.
This brings us back to the chorus which is again only fantasy, a simple little story where everything works out and the singer can be with the person they love.
Then we get more of a picture of how the singer ultimately interacts with their beloved, and its ultimately desperate and short lived, the lyrics invoke the image of war or a firing squad with them standing against a wall with guns being shot over their heads, implying on some level they mutually come together because of the harshness of the world towards them. With this and the next few lines I believe the song implies that the couple are in some kind of forbidden relationship, my mind immediately goes to them being either a gay couple or a racially mixed couple due to the time this song was released and David Bowie himself's personal experience as a bisexual man (at the time).
In the end the song sadly proclaims "We're nothing, and nothing will help us", the singer has accepted that they will never get what they want out of the romance and that maybe as implied before they aren't right for eachother anyway. At the same time though it ends on a hopeful note as the singer requests the "just one day" they had fantasized about previously, implying however slim a chance things could turn out the way the singer wanted them to, whether that is right or wrong is left to the listener.