David Bowie / Labyrinth (From the Original Soundtrack of the Jim Henson Film) / 1986
Underground
buoyant on the surface, anxious underneath
Written as the opening theme for Jim Henson's Labyrinth, this song sells escape as salvation while quietly undercutting it. Bowie's narrator promises an underworld free of pain and heartbreak, but the song's own repetitions and the child-like cries of "get me out" suggest that this refuge might be a trap dressed up as a paradise.
escape and flight the seduction of easy comfort childhood vulnerability illusory paradise rejection and heartbreak
Who's speaking
A knowing, almost seductive narrator addresses a hurt 'little girl,' while a chorus of pleading voices (framed as calls to a father and sister) cuts in as if from elsewhere in the story, creating a layered, slightly unreliable narration.
What happens
The song opens by acknowledging heartbreak and the temptation to flee it, then pivots into advertising an underground realm where love is guaranteed and pain is erased. As it repeats this pitch, the pleading interjections grow more frantic and childlike, until the song dissolves into a chant that is equal parts invitation and cry for rescue, leaving the 'underground' sounding as much like a place people are fleeing to as one they can't escape from.
How it's built
The song alternates between a verse-and-chorus pop structure and an increasingly chaotic vocal collage. Each chorus restates the underground's promises almost verbatim, while the interjected ad-libs ('daddy, daddy, get me out') function like a second voice track intruding on the main lyric, growing more prominent until the final third abandons verses entirely for a chant-like breakdown of fragmented pleas.
Section by section
Opening verse
The song begins in a register of gentle realism, acknowledging that walking away from pain is understandable, before quickly undercutting any comfort by naming the absence of love directly. This sets up the underground as a compensatory fantasy rather than a neutral setting..
First chorus
“a land serene, a crystal moon”
The imagery here is deliberately fairy-tale, almost saccharine, painting the underground as an idealized, love-filled sanctuary. Its excessive gentleness against the darker verse creates the song's central irony: paradise this frictionless is suspect.
Post-chorus turn
“it's only forever”
This line destabilizes the fantasy by making 'forever' sound both like a promise and a warning, hinting that permanence in this underground might be closer to entrapment than reward.
First breakdown
“daddy, daddy, get me out of here”
The intrusion of a childlike, panicked voice recontextualizes the underground from safe haven to something resembling a locked room. This is where the song's ambiguity fully surfaces — is this rescue or capture?
Final chant
By the end the lyric abandons narrative coherence altogether, cycling through fragments of desire and distress until the two blur. The repeated title becomes less a place-name than a mantra, suggesting dissociation or surrender rather than triumphant escape.
Craft
- call-and-response
- The main vocal line's assurances are constantly answered by a second voice begging to be gotten out, dramatizing a tension between the promise of the underground and a fear of being trapped there.
- repetition/incantation
- Phrases like the promise of permanence and the closing chant of the title word function almost as a spell, mimicking the hypnotic pull of the fantasy world being described.
- paradox
- The claim that the underground is eternal yet fleeting collapses time in a way that mirrors fairy-tale logic, where enchanted realms operate outside normal duration.
- symbolism
- The underground itself operates as a symbol for both escapist fantasy and a kind of numbing oblivion, allowing the song to read as both comforting and unsettling.
Reading it
On its surface, written for a family fantasy film, the song functions as an invitation to a magical underworld where heartbreak can't follow you — straightforward, romantic, très-80s pop-fantasy. But the interpolated cries for rescue complicate that reading, suggesting the underground is also a metaphor for retreating into fantasy or self-erasure as a response to real pain, with the promised comfort curdling into claustrophobia. Both readings can coexist: the song can be heard as children's-movie wish-fulfillment and as a subtler comment on the appeal and danger of numbing escape.
Context
Written and performed by Bowie for the 1986 Jim Henson film Labyrinth, in which Bowie also starred as Jareth the Goblin King. The song serves as the film's opening theme, setting up its story about a girl navigating a magical, morally ambiguous underground realm. Beyond that production context, I don't have reliable additional biographical detail about its composition.
Listen for
- The contrast between the lush, reassuring main melody and the more frantic, overlapping ad-libbed vocals
- How the promise of permanence is immediately qualified, creating tonal whiplash
- The gradual takeover of the song's back half by chant-like repetition, mirroring a loss of narrative control
- The way the addressed figures (father, sister) shift the song from private confession to something more like a fairy-tale plea
About David Bowie
David Robert Jones, known as David Bowie, was an English singer, songwriter and actor. Regarded as among the most influential musicians of the 20th century, he was known for his frequent reinvention and visual presentation, and is often referred to as the "chameleon of rock".
1947 - 2016 / England
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