over adversity". O'Leary states that the song is "Bowie at his most empathic and desperate; a wish-chant that offers a tiny regency for the spirit". Despite this, biographers mostly pan the shortened single edit for diminishing the song's power. O'Leary argues that the edit weakens the song as the buildup to the final verses is shortened, noting that Bowie's "heroic" vocal starts roughly two minutes earlier than the full album version. Perone agrees that the edit, which starts at the "dolphins" lyric, destroys the song's pacing, tension and impact, making it "not make as much sense". He expresses further criticism to shortening the single, as other highly successful singles of the rock era, such as the Beatles' "Hey Jude" (1968), were longer than the full-length version of Heroes. Following Bowie's death in January 2016, Rolling Stone named Heroes one of the 30 most essential songs of Bowie's catalogue. Likewise, numerous publications have considered the song one of Bowie's finest, with NME, Uncut and Smooth Radio labelling it his greatest. Others including Consequence of Sound, Digital Spy and Mojo, named it his second best, behind "Life on Mars?" (1971). In 2018, the readers of NME voted the song Bowie's fourth best track. Meanwhile, The Guardian Alexis Petridis placed it at number five in a list ranking Bowie's 50 greatest songs in 2020. He recognised the track as a "weird, ambiguous song" with an "uplifting-sporting-montage-soundtrack ubiquity" that turns six minutes of "pulsing electronic noise, howling guitars and screamed vocals" into "an all-purpose air-punching anthem". Accolades In ensuing decades, Heroes has appeared on lists of the greatest songs of all time. In a list of the 100 greatest singles of all time, NME placed at number five. In a similar list, Uncut found it the 16th best single from the post-punk era. In 2004, Rolling Stone rated Heroes number 46 in its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and later moving the song up to number 23 on the 2021 list. NME placed it at number 15 in their similar 2015 list. Included by Time in their 2011 list of the "All-Time 100 Songs", Pitchfork also included the song in The Pitchfork 500, a 2008 guide to the 500 greatest songs from punk to the present. In lists ranking the best songs of the 1970s, NME and Pitchfork listed the song at numbers four and six, respectively. The UK's Radio