5:15 The Angels Have Gone - Style and Themes

Style and Themes

Although many of its songs were written for the album Toy, and some are cover versions, biographers, and critics of the time claimed that Heathen deals with Bowie's impressions of the 11 September attacks. The lyrics of songs such as "Slow Burn", "Afraid", "A Better Future", and "Heathen (The Rays)" focus on the degradation of mankind and the world in general, recalling his earlier album Diamond Dogs and the song "Five Years".

Writing about the connection between the album and 9/11, Dave Thompson says:

Although we can probably credit nothing more spiritual than saturation-level television coverage for its visceral impact, 9/11 remains the single most resonant event in recent world history for many people, igniting so many thoughts, fears and conflicts within the minds of those who witnessed it that, even today, people who have never been to America, can still bond over those 102 terrifying minutes. At the time, and through the months of uncertainty that followed, the need for that bonding was even more pronounced. Heathen sounded like it understood how people felt. People automatically felt the need, then, to understand Heathen and, of all Bowie's albums of the nineties and beyond, it remains the one that is most frequently singled out as his best, because it is certainly his most direct. Even Tony Visconti referred to it as his magnum opus. I told him, 'That was more like a symphony.'

Bowie denied that any of the album's songs were written after September 2001, though he admits that the songs deal with the general feeling of anxiety that he's had in America for a number of years, adding "it's not unlikely that you're going to have a sense of angst in anything that's recorded in New York or by New Yorkers." He also have said in a 2003 interview: "It was written as a deeply questioning album. Of course, it had one foot astride that awful event in September. So that was quite a traumatic album to finish. This one hints at that, but it's not really trying to resolve any trauma. did affect me and my family very much. We live down here."

The album contains cover versions of three songs: "Cactus" by Pixies, "I've Been Waiting for You" by Neil Young (which had also been recorded by Pixies as a B-side for 1990's "Velouria" single), and "I Took a Trip on a Gemini Spaceship" by Norman Odam, aka the Legendary Stardust Cowboy, from whom Bowie lifted his "Ziggy Stardust" moniker in 1972.