"Bowie's performance thus grows in intensity precisely as ever more ambience infuses his delivery until, by the final verse, he has to shout just to be heard.The more Bowie shouts just to be heard, in fact, the further back in the mix Visconti's multi-latch system pushes his vocal tracks, creating a stark metaphor for the situation of Bowie's doomed lovers". Each microphone is muted as the next one is triggered. Only the first was opened for the quieter vocals at the start of the song, with the first and second opening on the louder passages, and all three on the loudest parts, creating progressively more reverb and ambience the louder the vocals became. Tony Visconti rigged up a system, a creative misuse of gating that may be termed "multi-latch gating", of three microphones to capture the epic vocal, with one microphone nine inches from Bowie, one 20 feet away and one 50 feet away. In addition, King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp generated an unusual sustained sound by allowing his guitar to feed back and sitting at different positions in the room to alter the pitch of the feedback (pitched feedback). These largely consist of synthesizer parts by Eno using an EMS VCS3 to produce detuned low-frequency drones, with the beat frequencies from the three oscillators producing a juddering effect.
However the remaining instrumental additions are highly distinctive. The basic backing track on the recording consists of a conventional arrangement of piano, bass guitar, rhythm guitar and drums. Eno has said that musically the piece always "sounded grand and heroic" and that he had "that very word – heroes – in my mind" even before Bowie wrote the lyrics. The music, co-written by Bowie and Eno, has been likened to a Wall of Sound production, an undulating juggernaut of guitars, percussion and synthesizers. Bowie's habit in the period following the song's release was to say that the protagonists were based on an anonymous young couple but Visconti, who was married to Mary Hopkin at the time, contends that Bowie was protecting him and his affair with Maaß. Producer Tony Visconti took credit for inspiring the image of the lovers kissing "by the wall", when he and backing vocalist Antonia Maaß embraced in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window. The quotation marks in the title of the song, a deliberate affectation, were designed to impart an ironic quality on the otherwise highly romantic, even triumphant, words and music. It was one of the early tracks recorded during the album sessions, but remained an instrumental until towards the end of production. The title of the song is a reference to the 1975 track "Hero" by the German band Neu!, whom Bowie and Eno admired.
In the UK, the final sixteen acts from the seventh series of The X Factor released a cover version of the song on 21 November 2010 which topped the UK singles chart. This version peaked at number 10 on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1998, as well as number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay chart, and number 23 on the Billboard Top 40 Mainstream charts. Among other notable covers, the Wallflowers recorded a version of the song for thesoundtrack to the 1998 film Godzilla. It was the lead track on Peter Gabriel's 2010 covers album, Scratch My Back. It has been cited as Bowie's second most covered song after "Rebel Rebel". While not a huge hit in the UK or US at the time, "'Heroes'" has gone on to become one of Bowie's signature songs and is well known today for its appearance in numerous advertisements. A product of Bowie's fertile "Berlin" period, life in the city was crystallized into a tale of two lovers who come together in the shadow of the "Wall of Shame" (though here "the shame was on the other side").
Produced by Bowie and Tony Visconti, it was released both as a single and as the title track of the album "Heroes". " 'Heroes'" is a song written by David Bowie and Brian Eno in 1977.