Talking Heads Albums

            Talking Heads are one of the bands that set the trends for people to follow, a completely unique band. They didn’t follow any kind of pattern or really build off of anything except the “idea” of rock music. They loved to experiment and though they had a pop side to their sound, they also dared to cross the line to experiment many, many times. The band was definitely of the disco age: all of their songs were danceable in some way, but they were rooted in rock music and especially tribal beats of the third world- a sound that consumed the band’s around their best albums. It is hard to compare them to other “punk” bands of the time such as the Ramones, The Clash, Television, Pere Ubu, etc, because Talking Heads always were their own flavor of music. In all though, Talking Heads fused pop music with a sense of quirkiness and disjointed edge as well as complicated structures on the best songs and albums, to create a new form of art rock. That, and they released the best concert film ever made, 1984’s Stop Making Sense directed by Johnathan Demme.

Band Members:  

       David Byrne – Vocals, Guitar

                                    Jerry Harrison – Guitar, Keyboards

                                    Tina Waymouth – Bass

                                    Chris Frantz – Drums

Biggest Influences:

Pere Ubu, Modern Lovers, Fela Kuti, Roxy Music, Al Green

Best Albums:

More Songs about Buildings and Food and Remain in Light

Albums Chronologically:

1977 – 86% – Talking Heads ‘77

1978 – 98%– More Songs About Buildings and Food

1979 – 93% – Fear of Music

1980 – 96% – Remain in Light

1983 – 84% – Speaking in Tongues

1985 – 68% – Little Creatures

1986 – 77% – True Stories

1988 – 46% – Naked

 Live Albums

 1984 - Stop Making Sense - 100%

1977

TALKING HEADS ‘77 – 86%

            The debut by the Talking Heads must have sounded completely unique for its time. Really, it still does: it gets the mixture of pop music with disjointed oddness just right. This is not a harsh sounding album, it is not “punk” like Sex Pistols or Clash were. What this album presents is that quirkiness does not necessarily mean dorky, and that great songs can be about everyday life. “Happy Day”, “Then Book I Read”, “First Week Last Week… Carefree” are all songs about things like reading, jobs, love, and universal topics that Byrne really just does different variations on his whole career. Bryne is defiantly kind of strange and awkward, but he is also sincere and touching, and never alienating (the difference between Talking Heads and say, Pere Ubu).

            A strong presence of well thought out song-structure also rules the album. For example, “No Compassion” is an era defining song: a song-within-a-song approach that to my knowledge, had NEVER been attempted before, at least not the way Byrne does it. It starts off talking about “a world where people have problems” in a slow, mysterious tempo – THEN it shifts to a completely different tune with its own verse and chorus and repeats this twice – THEN it goes back to the beginning mystery part. It is a awe inspiring example of song writing, and one of the band’s greatest tunes. “Psycho Killer” is the most famous tune on here with it’s mix of English and French and Byrne howling like a maniac, but even that is more disjointed than fast and intense; hell, it would work as an acoustic ballad. I love the way that song talks about “hating people when they are not polite!”, cracks me up every time. In the more traditional sense, we have “Uh Oh Love Comes to Town”, “New Feeling”, and “Pulled Up”, which are way more traditional sounding pop songs, but they are backed up by the great playing of the band. A little inconsistent towards the beginning with “Tentative Decisions” and “Who Is It” being a little grating in their repetition, but all in all a great debut from a promising band. This is a debut that points towards a future of infinite possibilities.

Greatest Songs: No Compassion, Psycho Killer, Happy Day, The Book I Read

1978

MORE SONGS ABOUT BUILDINGS AND FOOD –   98%

            Talking Head’s second album is their best and shows a band in complete control of their abilities. The confidence shines through from the first song to the last. Everything Byrne and company does is sublime and perfection in a nutshell, with many echoes of The Modern Lovers debut album from 2 years prior. I feel like I need to stress what an underrated album this is: not just a quantum leap from the previous one (Talking Heads ‘77), not just the band’s most underrated in its discography, but one of the best rock albums ever. It is NONSTOP in its barrage of great tunes and it changes tones and qualities the exact right amount of times in my opinion. It is CONSISTENT and every song is great (though a minor quibble could be “I’m Not In Love”). It is DANCEABLE & FUN all the way through, with “The Good Thing”, “Stay Hungry”, and “With Our Love” containing amazing twists and turns and “Warning Sign”, “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel”, and “Take Me to the River” being straight up funk classics! Most of all, it is PASSIONATE through and through. Byrne pleads with people to take another look at life in songs like “Girls Want to be with the Girls”, “Found a Job”, and “The Big Country” (which contains the great phrase “I wouldn’t lift it if he paid me”) and his struggle is personal not political like many of their new wave contemporaries.

Brain Eno’s production is the icing on the cake – known for his moody atmosphere and sheer great skills, ENO makes the band sound like something out of this world (though the songs by themselves would be great anyway…but that’s besides the point). I must point out that two of the best songs ever exist on More Songs About Buildings and Food: “With Our Love” and “Stay Hungry”. The former has a great captivating style while talking about the problems of natural human relationships and conflicts that arise such as jobs and stress, while the latter emphasizes structure of a different kind changing substantially three different times while maintaining a constant flow. Bryne proves himself worthy of the past masters of song structure such as Paul McCartney and Arthur Lee. Overall, rock music is given one of its best albums with More Songs about Buildings and Food, a shining light in a time of mainstream arena-rock garbage such as the late seventies.

Greatest Songs: With Our Love, Stay Hungry, The Big Country, The Good Thing

1979

FEAR OF MUSIC –  93%

            The band’s third album is a measure of human paranoia. Every single song is named after a topic to be afraid of, an experiment by Byrne to explore why people think like they do. An album created by any other band of this era would be hard to listen to, but Talking Heads have a target audience in mind, and come across with some of their most accessible songs. “Life During Wartime” is one of the most paranoid songs ever, but it is performed with such a jubilant attitude that all you wanna do is dance! Many other songs are of similar vein: “Heaven” and “Mind” sound ‘pleasant’ while being very serious in tone, while “I Zimbra” is some exuberant African funk that has little to do with the theme of the record, except that it is of exceptional quality. “Paper”, “Life During Wartime”, and “Electric Guitar” exemplify the paranoid mood and actually SOUND demented and crazy. “Animals” does not work so well, and is the only failed experiment on here. In some strange way that is hard to explain with words (most great albums are), Fear of Music has a flow to it that works well despite the overall negative tone and paranoid fantasies. The band shows its least accessible side with this album, but just because it is so bizarre at points (the Pere Ubu homage “Drugs” and the psychedelic vocals of “Air” come to mind) it is all relatively easy to enjoy. With tunes like “Cities”, “Heaven”, my personal favorite “Mind” about the nature of relationships, hell….about any nine songs on here are great by any standards, and that makes it another indispensable album by the band.

Greatest Songs: Mind, Air, Memories Can Wait, Heaven

1980

REMAIN IN LIGHT – 96%

            “Don’t you miss it, don’t you miss it; some of you people just about missed it,” says David Byrne in the first song of the Talking Head’s 4th album. Well, some people never ‘got it’, but this is not only one of the best albums ever but also one of the most unique. Morphing disco, dance, and African/Native American rhythms into abnormal and repetitive songs, this album is a hypnotic trance of music that you could listen to everyday and still get something out of it. The first half of the album is very upbeat, and the second half gradually becomes depressing until the finale; basically it goes from chaos to normality (the classic single “Once in a Lifetime” and “Houses in Motion”) then back into chaos ending with “The Overload”, a black hole of depression and excellent example of drone music.

Multiple listens are needed for Remain In Light to truly sink in, hard to get used to, but once you start to like it, you will realize it is one of the best albums of all time. My personal favorite is “The Great Curve” with its awesome gospel music chanting; it makes you want to go join the chorus and sing in! Another quality about Remain in Light is the way the album is not dated for an album released in 1980, it still sounds futuristic to this very day. ‘77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, and Fear of Music are all great albums, and Remain in Light is right there with them among the top of the rock album heap of the late 1970’s, looking down and setting the trends for the1980’s. The album is basically flawless, every song is great (even though there are only eight, if I had to like one the least it would be moody “Seen and Not Seen”), and it influenced artists as varied as Paul Simon, Madonna, Prince, U2, and countless New Wave rock bands. Remain in Light basically has more to offer than almost any other album does, period. Ladies and gents, this is great music experimentation.

Greatest Songs: The Great Curve, The Overload, Born Under Punches, Crosseyed and Painless