David Bowie: Big Brother Meaning
Big Brother Lyrics
Or should we powder our noses?
Don't live for last year's capers
Give me steel, give me steel, give me pulsars unreal
He'll build a glass asylum
With just a hint of mayhem
He'll build a better whirlpool
We'll...
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It is a song sung to God by people searching for answers.
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Bowie was going through a lot of turmoil at this time. There was hardly a rock musician from mid- (or post-) WW2 England who couldn't ignore how easy it was to see how their own ability to sway mass movements of a new generation seeking change could evolve with the slightest slip into an abuse of cult-like power rivaling that of Hitler. This easy line to cross from fan to genocidal fanatic (Bowie starts "Diamond Dogs" with the line "This isn't Rock & Roll-this is genocide!"-the new usurping the old) was demonstrated to rock operas like Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and The Who's "Tommy". I'm sure Bowie was well aware the Hitler was a former art student like himself.
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First interpretation, eh? Alright. Allegedly David was going to make a musical based on George Orwell 's classic 1984 and this is follow up song. Interesting to me is how he transforms Big Brother government system, impersonal and technological, into a leader type messiah. In the song he is searching for a savior, someone to "claim" them. A "glass asylum with just a hint of mayhem" sounds like our society now, actually! Insanity, the inmates run the show, in a see through world where privacy no longer exists
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