"Where Are We Now?" is the first single from David Bowie's 24th studio album, The Next Day. The single was released on iTunes on 8 January 2013, Bowie's 66th birthday, along with a video by Tony Oursler, which was posted on Bowie's website.

According to producer Tony Visconti, the timing of the release was Bowie's idea, and the single was simply "dropped" in iTunes for fans to discover, with no warning or fanfare.

Upon its release, the song received significant news coverage, which allowed it to peak at number six on the UK Singles chart. This proved to be Bowie's biggest hit since "Absolute Beginners" in 1986 and his last top ten hit before his death in January 2016. The success of the song also meant that Bowie has had a top ten hit on the UK Singles Chart in five different decades (1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2010s), something which few other artists have managed to achieve.

Bowie had not released new material since 2003's Reality, or performed live since 2006, and it was generally believed that he had retired. However, on the morning of his sixty-sixth birthday, "Where Are We Now?" appeared on iTunes, along with information about Bowie's upcoming new album The Next Day. The release was unusual in that it was issued with no promotion, with fans discovering the existence of the single themselves. The news was widely reported and the single received much radio airplay, quickly topping the iTunes downloads chart and eventually charting at number six on the UK Singles Chart. Despite the media attention surrounding the surprise release, Bowie made no media appearances whatsoever, with producer Tony Visconti instead taking media requests and accepting an interviewer's suggestion that he was Bowie's "voice on earth".

The lyrics are simple and repetitive, an older person reminiscing about time spent and time wasted: "Had to get the train / from Potsdamer Platz / you never knew that / that I could do that / just walking the dead", the last line of which, in the video, produces a grimace in the singer. He grimaces again just after: "A man lost in time near KaDeWe / just walking the dead," which precedes the refrain: "Where are we now / where are we now?" Chris Roberts called it a "spectral, frail yearning without chest-beating, candid in its few, clipped phrases and sighs concerning the heart's filthy lessons."

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Wikipedia