Strangers When We Meet is recognised as one of Bowie’s very best late period songs, some even arguing it is of equal stature to his 70s classics. Since it wasn’t a mainstream hit, it certainly seems one of his most underrated songs. The song is so passive aggressive but I like it a lot, and the singing and instrumentation is anything but conventional. Derrr. Bowie.
Strangers When We Meet grows more captivating with repeated listens—it’s an acquired taste, much like many of Bowie’s works have been for me. Despite already featuring his music here six times, I still feel like I’m just scratching the surface of his vast and eclectic discography.
Strangers When We Meet is the nineteenth and final track from David Bowie’s twentieth album, Outside. It was originally recorded for his 1993 album The Buddha of Suburbia, but he re-recorded it in 1995 for Outside. Wikipedia states that both biographers Nicholas Pegg and Chris O’Leary agree that the song seemed out-of-place on Outsiders: ‘Strangers When We Meet’ seems even more incongruous, resolving all the album’s angst and black comedy in a soothing slice of conventional pop“. The 1995 rerecording of the song appeared on the Best of Bowie DVD (2002).
Regarding the various interpretations surrounding Strangers When We Meet, John Rafferty at Quora did a sterling job laying it all out. I have presented below an abridged version of the three prevailing interpretations associated with the song. I would definitely recommend viewing his response in full if the following sparks your interest:
1. The most obvious interpretation is that it’s about his ex wife Angie Bowie. There is reference to ‘cold tired fingers tapping out your memories’ which is perhaps an allusion to Angie Bowie’s kiss and tell memoir ‘Backstage Passes’ which she published in 1993, the same year that Bowie wrote the song….
2. The song could be about any illicit love affair which has run its course. There is an old movie called Strangers When we Meet about an architect having an affair with a married woman which the song title probably comes from. The protagonist in the song is at first ‘bewildered’ and ‘resentful’ that they are strangers when they meet. Illicit lovers often have to pretend they have never met in social situations when in reality they are secretly intimate and this can frustrate people in that situation.
3. Given all of that, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Bowie is singing about himself and he has become a completely different person from the one he was in the early 70s. The David Bowie of Angie’s memoirs is an unrecognisably different character from the stable and happy person he has become, as a newly married man (to his second wife Iman) freed from the paranoia and melancholy of his earlier life.
[Verse 1]
All our friends
Now seem so thin and frail
Slinky secrets
Hotter than the sun
No peachy prayers
No trendy réchauffé
I’m with you
So I can’t go on
[Chorus]
All my violence raining tears upon the sheets
I’m bewildered, for we’re strangers when we meet
[Verse 2]
Blank screen TV
Preening ourselves in the snow
Forget my name
But I’m over you
Blended sunrise
And it’s a dying world
Humming Rheingold
We scavenge up our clothes
[Verse 3]
Cold tired fingers
Tapping out your memories
Halfway sadness
Dazzled by the new
Your embrace
It was all that I feared
That whirling room
We trade by vendu
Steely resolve is falling from me
My poor soul, poor bruised passivity
All your regrets ran rough-shod over me
I’m so glad that we’re strangers when we meet
I’m so thankful, that we’re strangers when we meet
I’m in clover, for we’re strangers when we meet
Heel head over, but we’re strangers when we meet
References:
1. Strangers When We Meet (David Bowie song) – Wikipedia
2. What is the meaning song Strangers When We Meet by David Bowie? – Quora
“The more I live, the more I learn. The more I learn, the more I realize, the less I know.”- Michel Legrand
Observation Blogger 
David Bowie essentially fell off my radar screen in the mid-’80s after the “Tonight” album, so it’s nice to hear a song from his career thereafter. I do recall listening to some music in the late ’80s he did with his band project Tin Machine, which at the time wasn’t my cup of tea. Since my music taste has since evolved, I may feel different about it now.
I’m not aware of his music with the Tin Machine. May be this is one of them. I just go where my appreciation flies.
I like this one…I never heard this before. I mostly know his 70s and his hits of the 80s…I did like Tin Machine…that band he was in…in the 90s.
I really like it and I’m glad you do to. I was not familiar with Tin Machine.
He did a stripped down punk rock band sort of thing…I quite liked it.