I grew up with hardcore punk, and hardcore knows no compromises. The Talking Heads were the first band to find grace in our eyes. The first song I really liked was “Once in a Lifetime”. MTV had just started to stretch his tentacles into our lives, and this song seemed to be the hymn of the fully koked adults who somehow tried to bring a meaning into their lives. “Remain in Light” was partly ambient, but had impressive lyrics and incredibly imaginative percussion and bass parts.
If you follow a talking head of the bass melody, you think you know in which direction the track develops. And then you hear the drums and find that they move in a completely different direction. And then you hear David Byrnes Lyrics and think: “That’s a completely different song again.” And then the guitar comes – and suddenly several songs merge into one. I almost suspect that she also used Brian Eno, her producer, like an instrument.
I grew up in a small town called Columbia in Maryland. It was a place that was designed on the drawing board, with artificial lakes and all the trimmings. David Byrne’s parents lived there for a while. The city had this facade that seemed to signal: everything here is solid and under control, everything is built for eternity – although the city was actually artificial. Byrnes texts dealt with this artificiality of American life. The American dream has a lot of unsightly dead ends, and Byrne’s texts made me feel like someone spoke about things that I had experienced on my own body.
I think it is the task of an artist to reflect on the time he lives. And the Talking Heads did exactly that. Like most people, I do not emotionally and spiritually follow a basic scheme, and in this respect I also spoke talking at different levels. But “Remain in Light” and “Fear of Music” thematized constants of modern life that are still relevant today.