Songfacts®:

• Bowie closes The Next Day with this haunting ballad concerning someone searching for their own identity in a prison setting. Producer Tony Visconti admitted to Rolling Stone "I'm not quite sure what he's singing about on it, but it's a classic Bowie ballad. He's singing in his handsomest voice, a very deep, very sonorous voice. And I can't give too much away about it because honestly, I don't know exactly what it's about, if it's about being in a real prison or being imprisoned in your mind. Again, it's certainly not about him; he's singing as the voice of somebody."
• Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima is name checked in the song. Bowie's Berlin apartment was decorated with a painted portrait of the avant-garde writer, who is remembered for his ritual suicide after a failed coup d'état.