"Let the poor boy dream."
"15 pop songs with a decidedly Latin groove."
—Tagline from the album's advertising campaign.
Rei Momo, released in 1989 through Luaka Bop, Sire Records, and Warner (Bros.) Records, is the debut solo album (and second studio album overall, after the 1981 Brian Eno collaboration My Life in the Bush of Ghosts) by Scottish-American Alternative Rock musician and Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. Released while Talking Heads were officially on hiatus following the release of Naked one year prior, the album sees Byrne dive full-force into the Latin American musical styles that he had been flirting with since the band's 1986 album True Stories.
Teaming up again with Naked producer Steve Lillywhite, Byrne recruited a large team of collaborators, most of whom were experienced Latin American musicians, to move away from the worldbeat stylings of Naked in favor of creating an album that was fully World Music. Each song on the album explores a different style of traditional Latine dance music, combining these sounds with Byrne's trademark lyrical eccentricity to produce a Pan-American mixture of both insider and outsider perspectives.
Byrne supported Rei Momo with a tour spanning the last quarter of 1989, additionally performing "Dirty Old Town" and "Loco de Amor" on the 15th season of Saturday Night Live. Despite these efforts, the album wasn't a commercial success, only reaching No. 71 on the Billboard 200 and No. 52 on the UK Albums chart. However, it would nonetheless set the tone for Byrne's later works, which continued to mix alternative rock with Latin musical styles. Together with Passion by Peter Gabriel four months prior, the album would also be credited with popularizing World Music in the Anglosphere following the gradual decline of worldbeat throughout the second half of The '80s (much like how Byrne and Gabriel previously kickstarted the worldbeat boom with Remain in Light and Melt, respectively, at the start of the decade). Two years after the album's release, Byrne unilaterally dissolved Talking Heads, shifting focus to his solo career; his next album just three months later would take what he learned on Rei Momo and reapply it to what Talking Heads had done on Naked.
Rei Momo was supported by two singles: "Make Believe Mambo" and "Independence Day". "Dirty Old Town" was also given a promotional release and a music video.
Tracklist:
- "Independence Day" (5:45)
- "Make Believe Mambo" (5:23)
- "The Call of the Wild" (4:55)
- "Dirty Old Town" (4:12)
- "The Rose Tattoo" (3:50)
- "Loco de Amor" (3:51)
- "The Dream Police" (3:00)
- "Don't Want to Be Part of Your World" (4:55)
- "Marching Through the Wilderness" (4:30)
- "Good and Evil" (4:35)
- "Lie to Me" (3:40)
- "Office Cowboy" (3:40)
- "Women vs. Men" (4:06)
- "Carnival Eyes" (4:04)
- "I Know Sometimes a Man is Wrong" (3:11)
Cowboys are troping out this lonesome tune:
- Alternate Album Cover:
- LP releases feature a larger, zoomed-out version of the front cover showing more of both the heart and Byrne's face.
- Promotional CD copies handed out to radio stations and reviewers only feature the heart on the liner notes, with the green dots depicting Byrne's face being printed directly on the lid of the jewel case.
- The digital release of the album removes the heart in the background, replacing it with a solid black backdrop.
- Bookends: The opening track, "Independence Day", emphasizes the kinds of things that the narrator and his partner do and feel at night, and the arrangement prominently features an accordion (a free-reed instrument). The closing track, "I Know Sometimes a Man is Wrong", revolves around the narrator comforting his partner in bed by owing up to his shortcomings, with ambient animal noises playing in the background to accentuate a nocturnal setting—and the only instrument is a harmonium (another free-reed instrument).
- Break-Up Song: "The Rose Tattoo" is narrated by a man mourning a recent breakup, with the titular tattoo being the only remnant of the past relationship.
- Color Motif: Continuing from Byrne's days with Talking Heads, red is a huge visual element for Rei Momo. The front cover, the back cover, the back of the liner notes, the disc label, and the single covers all feature vivid red backdrops.
- Concept Album: The album revolves around exploring different styles of Latin American dance music, with almost every song being in a different style than the last (as indicated on the back cover). The final track, "I Know Sometimes a Man Is Wrong", is the only one that doesn't fit into this theme.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The music video for "Make Believe Mambo" is shot entirely in black and white.
- Dream Walker: In "The Dream Police", there's an entire justice system to prosecute crimes committed in sleep, owed to the fact that "everyone has the same dreams, on different days of the week."
- Drowning My Sorrows: In "The Rose Tattoo", the narrator notes in the choruses that he constantly drinks to alleviate the pain of his breakup.
- Face on the Cover: A green-tinted headshot of Byrne appears on the front cover, peeking through cutouts in an image of a human heart.
- Flower Motifs: In "The Rose Tattoo", the titular floral marking represents the narrator's memories of the partner he broke up with.
- Foreign Language Title: The album title is the Portuguese name for the Carnival character King Momo
. "Loco de Amor" is also Spanish for "crazy for love" (as translated in the song itself). - Formula-Breaking Episode: While the rest of the album features various Latin dance genres, the final song "I Know Sometimes a Man Is Wrong" is a minimalist piece with a simple melody and no instruments other than a harmonium and sampled animal noises. Accordingly, the back cover doesn't pin a style to it.
- The Generation Gap: "Don't Want to Be Part of Your World" details the disillusionment younger generations feel towards older generations, rejecting and fleeing from them with the aim of living free from their influence.
- Genre Roulette: While the album as a whole focuses on Latin American dance music, that's an umbrella that encompasses a lot of different genres. So every song is in a different style than the last, and the back cover lists each song's specific genre in parentheses. Byrne himself acknowledged the mish-mash after the fact, in the press kit for his next solo album Uh Oh:Rei Momo was a whole bunch of different bands playing; different styles, different musicians. It was almost like a sampler, like one of our (Luaka Bop) compilations. I like it.
- Gratuitous Panning: "The Dream Police" features a continuous güiro part that plays exclusively in the right channel.
- Gratuitous Spanish: To be expected from a Latin dance album that's otherwise sung in English:
- "Make Believe Mambo" features interjections of "todo el mundo," "in my mundo," and "mundo mambo," courtesy of salsa musician Willie Colón.
- "Loco de Amor" includes various Spanish-language title drops and interjections of "yen yeré cumbé."
- The outro of "Marching Through the Wilderness" features the line "I'm the heartthrob, crying without compassion" sung in Spanish.
- Hope Springs Eternal: In "Dirty Old Town", the narrator notes how, despite his and his peers' hardships in the slums, "someday things'll get better, somehow things'll get done."
- Longest Song Goes First: The album opens with "Independence Day", which at 5:45 beats out the next-longest track, "Make Believe Mambo", by 22 seconds.
- Loss of Identity: In the second verse of "Make Believe Mambo", the narrator fears that the boy imitating what he sees on TV has lost all semblance of a legitimate personality, being composed entirely of learned cues and mimicry.
- Lyrical Dissonance:
- "Dirty Old Town" is a jaunty mapeyé number about the hardships of slum life, with the song's vignettes including things such as people being taught how not to get assaulted by criminals and folks sending prayers that never get answered.
- "The Dream Police" is a pleasant-sounding cha-cha song about "the watchdogs of your mind" who tyrannically prosecute people for the things that occur in their dreams.
- "Don't Want to Be Part of Your World" is a bombastic salsa piece about younger generations' disillusionment and rejection of older generations.
- Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: "Women vs. Men" is one of Byrne's many songs based on contrasting gender norms, noting how "women have their world, and men, we have ours; we're into sports, and they're into flowers."
- Multilingual Song:
- "The Call of the Wild" alternates between English and Spanish verses, with some intertwining the two languages together.
- "The Rose Tattoo" is mostly in English, while two lengthy post-choruses are in Spanish.
- "Office Cowboy" alternates between English and Spanish passages.
- Never Trust a Title: "Make Believe Mambo" is an Orísa song, not an actual mambo.
- Non-Appearing Title: "Carnival Eyes"; the closest it gets is "carnival girl, where do those eyes come from?" in the choruses.
- Performance Video: The music videos for both "Make Believe Mambo" and "Dirty Old Town" depict Byrne performing with a troupe of musicians and dancers. The former features them dancing on a black, spotlit stage, while the latter overlays a continuous closeup of Byrne's face atop footage of him and the backing band performing.
- Production Throwback: In the music video for "Make Believe Mambo", Byrne briefly repeats the "leg-shaking" dance move from the Stop Making Sense performance of "Girlfriend Is Better".
- Rearrange the Song:
- "Loco de Amor" was originally written and recorded for the soundtrack to Something Wild; it was remixed for inclusion on this album.
- "Carnival Eyes" is a redone version of the Naked outtake "In Asking Land", the original version of which would later be included on the 2005 Boxed Set Once in a Lifetime.
- Re-Cut: LP copies drop "Loco de Amor", "Good and Evil", and "Office Cowboy" due to space limitations.
- Red/Green Contrast: The front cover features a red human heart obscured by green cutout dots depicting David Byrne's face behind them, while the back of the liner notes feature a green-tinted photograph of dancers with cutout dots depicting a red rose. The back cover and disc label additionally feature a green pepper against a red curtain, a motif that would carry over to the album's associated singles.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: "Don't Want to Be Part of Your World", where hundreds of boys and girls bid their parents farewell and disappear upstream or down tunnels to start a new life in an Edenic commune.
- Self-Deprecation: "Make Believe Mambo" takes playful jabs at Byrne's habit of watching TV to try and better understand the world around him, featuring a story about a man who gets so into the habit that he becomes devoid of any real personality, operating solely on memorized cues and imitations.
- Shout-Out:
- The album title references the Carnival character King Momo, known as Rei Momo in the Portuguese-language nation of Brazil.
- "The Call of the Wild" asks "What made Mona Lisa smile?" and describes how "Johnny Mathis sings Cole Porter."
- Special Guest:
- Returning Naked collaborator Kirsty Mac Coll sings backing vocals on "Independence Day", "Make Believe Mambo", "The Dream Police", "Don't Want to Be Part of Your World", and "Lie to Me".
- Prolific salsa musician Willie Colón provides guest vocals on "Make Believe Mambo".
- Celia Cruz sings backing vocals on "Loco de Amor".
- Latin jazz musician Milton Cardona provides backing vocals on "Marching Through the Wilderness" and "Carnival Eyes".
- Brazilian singer Herbert Vianna sings backing vocals on "Carnival Eyes".
- Taught by Television: "Make Believe Mambo" is about a boy who tries to fit in with society by imitating what he sees on TV.
- Thoughtcrime: "The Dream Police" takes place in a setting where police officers and courts can charge and convict someone for dreaming the wrong things.
- The X of Y: "The Call of the Wild" provides an English-language example, while "Loco de Amor" is a Spanish-language one.
