David Bowie's 'Be My Wife' Feels Like His Most Vulnerable Lyrics

One can’t go very long in a conversation about pop or rock music without mentioning David Bowie. His originality—shaped by constant travel, changing relationships, and a willingness to blend genres—fed into a body of work that often drew directly from his personal life.

“Be My Wife,” the second single from his 1977 album Low, leans toward old-school rock and roll even as it shares the album’s heavier percussion and electric guitar. Its opening lines—“Sometimes you get so lonely/ Sometimes you go nowhere/ I’ve lived all over the world/ I’ve lived every place.”—mirror a nomadic life and a sense of isolation that crept into Bowie’s songs.

His marriage to Mary Angela Barnett was reportedly open and fraught; she later said she’d only married him to get a work permit and recalled Bowie telling her, “I’m not really in love with you.” The chorus—“Please be mine/ Share my life/ Stay with me/ Be my wife”—reads as a plain, aching plea.

david bowie, low album, 1977, bemywife, angela barnett, open marriage, lyrics, loneliness, rock music, nomadic life