I'd never thought of it in the way ChildofMusic and prilla1206 say, but that makes sense, thinking about the lyrics and the differences between Mercury and Bowie's parts.
I'd heard somewhere that the song was originally to be called "People on the Streets", and that line features heavily in the song. So, I wonder if this is about our attitudes to the "undesirables" in society - the people on streets etc., that our world throws out. The conflict between Bowie and Mercury then becomes about how we treat this people: Freddie sings "can't we give love one more chance", we need to love these people? But Bowie's words point out what that means: love as a word is easy to say, but it has vast implications, i.e. "love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night and... change our way of caring about ourselves". There's almost a challenge in these words: are we up to it?
Agree that this is a great song and Vanilla Ice's rip-off is horrendous.
I'd never thought of it in the way ChildofMusic and prilla1206 say, but that makes sense, thinking about the lyrics and the differences between Mercury and Bowie's parts.
I'd heard somewhere that the song was originally to be called "People on the Streets", and that line features heavily in the song. So, I wonder if this is about our attitudes to the "undesirables" in society - the people on streets etc., that our world throws out. The conflict between Bowie and Mercury then becomes about how we treat this people: Freddie sings "can't we give love one more chance", we need to love these people? But Bowie's words point out what that means: love as a word is easy to say, but it has vast implications, i.e. "love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night and... change our way of caring about ourselves". There's almost a challenge in these words: are we up to it?
Agree that this is a great song and Vanilla Ice's rip-off is horrendous.