Last Updated on 5 April 2026 by Massimo M.
David Bowie’s “Heroes”: the five covers that truly did it justice
Last updated: April 2026 | Reading time: ~7 min
Few songs in rock history have attracted as many cover versions as “Heroes”. Written by David Bowie and Brian Eno in 1977, the song has been interpreted by artists spanning punk, prog, metal, and avant-garde, each bringing something different to its extraordinary chord sequence and lyrical imagery. This is not a list of every cover ever recorded. It is a selection of the five that, in my view, genuinely understood what the song is about and had the courage to make it their own.
Why “Heroes” is so hard to cover well
The challenge with covering “Heroes” is not technical. The original arrangement, built around Robert Fripp’s sustained guitar feedback, Tony Visconti’s layered production, and Bowie’s increasingly desperate vocal, creates an emotional arc that is almost impossible to replicate. Most covers fail because they try to reproduce the feeling rather than reinterpret it. The five versions below succeed precisely because they resist that temptation.
A note on format: all five covers listed here are available on vinyl or CD, which matters for those of us who prefer to own music in physical form.
The five best covers of Heroes — in chronological order
Blondie (1980)
Live recording
Blondie’s version is the earliest on this list, and arguably the one with the strongest claim to authenticity. Debbie Harry and the band had been performing their take on “Heroes” live since the late 1970s, and the energy of those performances translated directly onto the recording.
The cover appears as the B-side of Atomic (1980), and was captured live at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in late 1978. Harry’s vocal delivery is rawer and more urgent than Bowie’s studio version — less theatrical, more visceral. The band strips the arrangement back considerably, which in this case adds rather than detracts. For a post-punk audience of the time, this version made “Heroes” feel immediate and unfinished in the best possible sense.
Nico (1981)
Nico’s relationship with Bowie’s world was already established through the Velvet Underground’s orbit and the wider downtown New York scene. Her version of “Heroes”, included on Drama of Exile (1981), her fifth studio album, is one of the most unsettling reinterpretations ever committed to record.
Christa Päffgen’s deep, accented voice gives the song an entirely different emotional register. Where Bowie builds to euphoria, Nico remains desolate throughout. The arrangement, sparse and drone-heavy, transforms the Wall of Berlin from a backdrop of romantic defiance into something far bleaker. If Bowie’s “Heroes” is about the possibility of transcendence, Nico’s version is a reminder of its cost.
Oasis (1997)
B-side single
The Gallagher brothers’ relationship with Bowie’s catalogue was well documented throughout the Britpop era — Noel Gallagher famously cited him as a foundational influence. Their version of “Heroes” was released as the B-side of D’You Know What I Mean? on 7 July 1997, at the peak of the band’s commercial dominance.
What makes this version interesting is how thoroughly Oasis Oasis-ify the song. The guitars are heavier and more distorted, the rhythm section blunt and driving. Liam Gallagher’s vocal is utterly unironic — he sings “Heroes” as if he means every word of it, which is exactly the right approach. It is not a subtle interpretation, but it is a committed one, and on a B-side — a format the band used repeatedly to showcase non-album material — it found the audience it deserved.
King Crimson (2016)
Live EP
The connection between King Crimson and “Heroes” is more than circumstantial. Robert Fripp, Crimson’s founder and guitarist, was the one who played on Bowie’s original 1977 recording — those elongated guitar drones that define the song’s texture are his work. When the 2016 incarnation of King Crimson decided to cover “Heroes” on their Heroes: Live in Europe 2016 EP, it was therefore something closer to a reclamation than a homage.
The version included on the EP was recorded at the Admiralspalast in Berlin on 11 September 2016 — a choice of venue that was clearly intentional — and performed as an encore before 21st Century Schizoid Man. The full-length version runs significantly longer than the original, with Fripp’s guitar given far more room to develop. It is the most musically complex cover on this list, and the one that reveals most about the song’s underlying structure.
The EP also includes Easy Money, Starless and The Hell Hounds of Krim, and served as a preview for a full live album released the following September.
Motörhead (2017)
Motörhead’s version of “Heroes” was recorded in 2015 during the sessions for Bad Magic, but remained unreleased until August 2017 — nearly two years after Lemmy Kilmister’s death in December 2015. It was eventually included on Under Cöver, released on 1 September 2017 by Motörhead Music and Silver Lining Music Ltd., the band’s second posthumous album.
The lineup on the recording — Kilmister, Mikkey Dee and Phil Campbell — represents the last stable incarnation of Motörhead, and there is something genuinely moving about hearing Lemmy sing “we can be heroes, just for one day” knowing it would be one of his final recordings. The arrangement is predictably heavy, but the song absorbs it well. “Heroes” has always been about defiance, and defiance was Motörhead’s natural language.
A song that keeps being rediscovered
“Heroes” endures not because it is easy to cover, but because its central idea — the possibility of nobility in an ordinary moment — resonates across genres, generations and contexts. The five versions above are proof that a great song can survive almost any interpretation, as long as the artist brings honesty to it. The ones that fail are the ones that treat it as a tribute. The ones that succeed treat it as their own.
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