Music / Talking Heads

L-to-R: Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison, David Byrne

Influences:

• Fela Kuti, James Brown, Brian Eno, Al Green, Philip Glass, King Crimson, The Velvet Underground, David Bowie, Neil Young, George Clinton, Frank Zappa, Joy Division, Roxy Music, Can, Miles Davis, Pere Ubu, Kraftwerk...

Influenced:

• David Bowie, Brian Eno, Kate Bush, Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Fleetwood Mac, Paul McCartney, Pearl Jam, Tears for Fears, Depeche Mode, Radiohead, Phish, White Lies, Widespread Panic, Metric, The Weeknd, Vampire Weekend, Foals, Primus, St. Vincent, The 1975, Bell X1, Kesha, Nelly Furtado, The Pixies, R.E.M., Red Vox, Lady Gaga, Nine Inch Nails, Rush, "Weird Al" Yankovic, Joy Division, Richard Wright (Pink Floyd)...

Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down
Letting the days go by, water flowing underground
Into the blue again, after the money's gone
Once in a lifetime, water flowing underground.

— "Once in a Lifetime"

Talking Heads was an American rock band formed in 1974 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised vocalist / guitarist David Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz, bassist Tina Weymouth (married to Frantz), and guitarist / keyboardist Jerry Harrison. Auxiliary musicians also frequently made appearances in concert and on the group's albums.

The musical style of Talking Heads combined elements of post-punk, new wave, punk rock, avant-garde, pop, funk, afrobeat and art rock. Essentially, they're post-punk's Spiritual Antithesis to the likes of Joy Division and The Cure. Frontman and songwriter David Byrne contributed whimsical, esoteric lyrics to the band's songs, and emphasized their showmanship through various multimedia projects and performances. The band worked with famous Record Producer Brian Eno on all their albums between 1978–80, whose influence steered them towards their Signature Style dominated by incredibly dense, hypnotic funk grooves over which Byrne would improvise his vocals. They parted ways with Eno after their masterpiece Remain in Light and continued with a Lighter and Softer sound for the rest of their career, to increasing dissatisfaction from fans and critics. In 1986, they made a movie called True Stories, starring Byrne as the narrator and accompanying a concurrent studio album consisting of the band performing the songs from the movie (ironically, the film itself falls under the trope Talking Heads).

In 1988, Talking Heads announced that they would be taking a hiatus following the release of their eighth album, Naked; three years later, they released the song "Sax and Violins" as a single to promote the soundtrack album to the film Until the End of the World, on which it was included. In December of 1991, the band officially announced that they had parted ways, the end result of longstanding tensions between David Byrne and the rest of the band; shortly after, Frantz, Harrison, and Weymouth regrouped under the name Shrunken Heads to continue live performances. In 1996, under the shortened name the Heads, the three recorded No Talking, Just Head, an album on which Byrne was replaced by a new guitarist and a variety of guest singers, including Debbie Harry, Shaun Ryder, Michael Hutchence, Andy Partridge and Johnette Napolitano of Concrete Blonde (who sang lead on the accompanying tour). The album was not well received, and its success was hampered by Byrne filing a trademark infringement lawsuit against the band, which delayed its release. The full original lineup has since reunited exactly once, performing three songs for their induction ceremony to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, as well as making public appearances together to promote A24's 2023 re-release of Stop Making Sense.

Talking Heads is often considered one of the best and most influential bands in popular music since The Beatles, with their first five albums in particular being considered both hallmarks and highlights of the American side of the Post-Punk movement; their progressive-yet-accessible output was particularly noted as playing a major part in shaping popular music as a whole during and after their lifetime, with author Bill Martin writing that "a good deal of the more interesting rock since that time is clearly 'post-Talking Heads' music." In particular, the band is considered in hindsight to be a major influence in the development of Alternative Rock, which they themselves would wind up participating in during the latter years of their career (though the public's awareness of this only came about in hindsight decades later). Even before Remain in Light and before the emergence of alternative rock, the band were already influencing the likes of David Bowie, Peter Gabriel, Fleetwood Mac, Richard Wright of Pink Floyd, Kate Bush, and, sure enough, former Beatle Paul McCartney, as well as popularizing World Music in the West. Even Tim & Eric cited the band, particularly David Byrne's strange mannerisms, as an influence on their comedy.

Four of Talking Heads' albums appeared on Rolling Stone magazine's 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and the Channel 4 100 Greatest Albums poll listed one album (Fear of Music) at number 76. In addition, their concert film Stop Making Sense is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of the genre, and later concert films owe quite a lot to it. Rolling Stone later named them the 100th greatest artist of all time on their updated list.

---

Discography:

Studio Albums:

• Talking Heads: 77 (1977)
• More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978)
• Fear of Music (1979)
• Remain in Light (1980)
  • "Once in a Lifetime" (1981)
• Speaking in Tongues (1983)
• Little Creatures (1985)
• True Stories (1986)
• Naked (1988)

Live Albums:

• The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads (1982)^note reissued in 2004 with an expanded tracklist
• Stop Making Sense (1984)^note reissued in 1999 with a revised tracklist as the Special New Edition

Compilations:

• Sand in the Vaseline: Popular Favorites (1992)^note North America-only
• Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads (1992)^note international single-disc version of Sand in the Vaseline
• Once in a Lifetime (2003)
• The Best of Talking Heads (2004)
• Talking Heads (2005)^note DualDisc Boxed Set compiling the band's eight studio albums plus bonus tracks; also known as Brick after its packaging design
• Bonus Rarities and Outtakes (2006)

Miscellaneous Works:

• "Love → Building on Fire" (1977)^note non-album single and the band's debut release
• Stop Making Sense (1984)^note Concert Film directed by Jonathan Demme
• Storytelling Giant (1988)^note music video compilation plus interviews of random people recounting unrelated anecdotes; reissued and expanded as part of the Once in a Lifetime Boxed Set in 2003
• "Sax and Violins" (1991)^note single recorded for the soundtrack to Until the End of the World and the band's final release before the official announcement of their breakup
• No Talking, Just Head (1996)^note the sole studio album by failed revival project the Heads

---

"And you may say to yourself, 'these are not my beautiful tropes'":

• '70s Hair: Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison, who both have maintained these styles to this day. David Byrne also sported this style in the band's early days (as seen in the band photo on the sleeve for "Love → Building on Fire"), before changing his hairstyle to '50s Hair. During his RISD days, Byrne even wore long hair and a beard, a look that would have been de riguer for young men in the early '70s.
• The '80s: While they formed and released three albums in the '70s, their '80s work was their most successful and well-known, to the point where their de-facto dissolution is generally agreed to have occurred just after Naked released in 1988 (despite the fact that it wasn't announced until 1991, by which point they had already put out one last single and polished up a few other outtakes for 1992's Sand in the Vaseline).
• After the End: "(Nothing But) Flowers" is set after an unspecified apocalypse that reverted the Earth to a New Eden.
• Alternative Rock: The band was a major influence on the movement, and their last three albums in retrospect are considered examples of it as well (albeit mixed in with conspicuous pop rock elements).
• Animated Music Video: "And She Was".

• The Band Minus the Face: No Talking, Just Head is generally seen as nothing more than the frustrated grumblings of David Byrne's former bandmates. Some of the song titles (i.e. "Damage I've Done", "The King is Gone", and "Don't Take My Kindness For Weakness") and inner artwork◊ of a used voodoo doll that looks suspiciously like Byrne covered in various negative descriptors doesn't help.
• Bo Diddley Beat: "Ruby Dear" is driven by one.
• Book Ends: The band's debut ("Love → Building on Fire") and farewell ("Sax and Violins") releases were both non-album singles (technically "Sax and Violins" was included on the soundtrack album for the film it was finished for, but it was never placed on a proper studio album except as a bonus track on the 2005 reissue of Naked).
• Broken Record: Same as it ever was... same as it ever was... same as it ever was... same as it ever was...
• Captain Obvious: Lots of lovable instances in the lyrics. Works in a weird, unexplainable way. Are you aware, for example, that "there is water at the bottom of the ocean"?
• Cloudcuckoolander: David Byrne comes across as one.
• The Comically Serious: Byrne also comes across this way due to making bizarre movements, vocalizations, and deadpan stage announcements with a straight face.
• Control Freak: The other band members claim Byrne was one throughout the band's history, eventually causing the band to break up. He admitted as much on the DVD commentary to Stop Making Sense.
• Covered in Gunge: The whole band gets coated in chocolate during the video for "Love for Sale", especially Tina.
• Darker and Edgier: Fear of Music and Remain in Light are considerably darker and more foreboding in tone than any of the band's albums before or since.
  • The final song on Fear of Music, "Drugs", is itself a Darker and Edgier reworking of an earlier song called "Electricity", which had the same words and chord structure but an entirely different feel.
• Digital Piracy Is Evil: Indirectly; in her part of the band's speech at their Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, Tina Weymouth urged viewers and listeners to buy their albums rather than download them. Keep in mind, this was in 2002, when official methods of digital distribution weren't as popular as they are today and MP3s were still commonly associated with piracy; iTunes was just barely over a year old at this point, still only available on the Mac, and Apple had yet to launch the Music Store.
• Distinct Double Album: The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads features assorted live performances from 1977-1979 on disc one and recordings from the 1980-1981 Remain in Light tour on disc two. This carried over into the 2004 expanded reissue.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Their debut album, Talking Heads: 77, is a lot more pop-oriented than the eclectic Post-Punk-New Wave Music-Funk sound Talking Heads would become known for; this is mainly due to Executive Meddling, as Tony Bongiovi wanted to steer the band in a pop direction. Of the eleven songs heard on Talking Heads: 77, only the penultimate track, "Psycho Killer", resembles anything close to the band's better-known material, and it's perhaps because of this that it's typically the only song from Talking Heads: 77 played live since the 1980's.
  • Their first single, "Love → Building on Fire" was recorded before Jerry Harrison joined the band.
• Epic Rocking: The Name of This Band is Talking Heads features the live version of "Born Under Punches" clocking in at 8:25 with the band performing the song and milking every minute for what it's worth. "The Great Curve" and "Houses in Motion" on the same album are both over six minutes and show the best parts of Remain in Light and the best parts of the band in their prime.
  • "Psycho Killer" used to be this in concert: The final section would devolve into Byrne and Harrison dueling on guitars for minutes on end.
  • A lot of the songs on Stop Making Sense are really long in the complete soundtrack. The longest are "Take Me to the River", at just over eight minutes; and "Crosseyed and Painless", which runs for around seven and a half minutes for the song proper, but there's a bit of crowd noise and a Hidden Track at the end that raise the total track length to nearly ten minutes.
  • Some surround sound mixes of Remain in Light have extended versions of "The Overload"; one version, for instance, runs for 7:30, making it their longest studio track in such mixes.
• Everyone Went to School Together: Weymouth, Frantz, and Byrne were all students at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) and had started another band together (The Artistics) there before moving to New York and (after a little while) becoming Talking Heads.
• Fake Guest Star: Adrian Belew lobbied hard to be the fifth member of the band but in the end Byrne decided that if anyone was going be their resident guitar hero, it would be himself. Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz also pushed Belew to join the band as a replacement for David Byrne (at a time when creative tensions with Byrne were starting to have a noticeable impact on the band), but Belew turned them down, apparently preferring to work with Byrne instead of ousting him. The late Bernie Worrell, meanwhile, toured with the band a lot in the early '80s and was a significant contributor to both Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues, and as such is regarded by some as being a de facto fifth member. He even performed with them for their one-night-only reunion at their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Dolette McDonald also worked as their main backing singer between 1980 and 1983, including appearances on Byrne and Harrison's solo albums.
• Fake-Out Fade-Out: "No Compassion".
• Female Rockers Play Bass: Tina Weymouth probably helped influence this trope quite a bit, as the bassist and only woman—although she did have female company as backing vocalists on tour with Talking Heads.
• Funk: An important influence on their style. To underscore this, the backing musicians who accompany them on their Stop Making Sense album / concert movie are all funk musicians affiliated with Parliament-Funkadelic (except for Alex Weir, who was part of The Brothers Johnson).
• '50s Hair: Byrne stuck out by wearing a clean-cut, often slicked-back hairstyle at the height of the band's popularity, when the look was unusual for rock musicians at the time. He did grow it out during the recording of Naked, as seen in a photo included in the liner notes, but made sure to cut it for the album's music videos. Apart from growing it out again for his 1994 Self-Titled Album, he's kept the style to this day, and is likely the inspiration for modern indie rock musicians sporting the look.
• Flyover Country: "The Big Country" lampoons general perceptions of this trope.
• Framing Device: The Storytelling Giant music video anthology uses interviews with random people to set up the videos.
• Gasshole: Weymouth claimed that Byrne was one in the band's early days, constantly farting, even during the inner sleeve photo shoot for Talking Heads: 77, which she attributed to his habit of wolfing down his food.
• Genre-Busting: The band's music defied all known conventions at the time, oftentimes defying their own standards. Their sound would constantly change not only from album to album, but also from song to song, a trait David Byrne would carry over into his equally eclectic solo career.

• Grand Finale: 1991's "Sax and Violins", whose lyrics heavily allude to the impending announcement of Talking Heads' dissolution.
• Gratuitous French: "Psycho Killer" features this in the chorus and the bridge.
• Greatest Hits Album: The group has received several of these since their breakup, with one new compilation coming out each year between 2003 and 2006 (counting the self-titled studio album Boxed Set); they have almost as many compilations as they do studio albums!
• Happily Married: Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz.
• Heavy Meta: "Electric Guitar", in which the titular instrument is both "a crime against the state" and "the meaning of life."
• I Am the Band: Byrne is a notorious example, to the point where he and Harrison were the only members of the band who appeared in the video for their final single before their official breakup, "Sax and Violins", and even then Harrison is absent for the vast majority of the video, only appearing in one segment near the end. Tellingly, Harrison is the one member Byrne best gets along with today, actually being on speaking terms with him (as opposed to being on "email terms" with Frantz and not making contact at all with Weymouth if it's not absolutely necessary). Frantz and Weymouth even repeatedly claimed over the years that Byrne dissolved Talking Heads unilaterally, to the point where the claim is repeated in the couple's memoir Remain in Love.
• Iconic Outfit: Byrne's gigantic French gray suit from Stop Making Sense. "Weird Al" Yankovic dons a similar costume while performing his style parody of them, "Dog Eat Dog", in concert.
• Idiosyncratic Album Naming: Their live album The Name of This Band is Talking Heads stems from Byrne announcing the next songs as: "The name of this song is [insert song title here]."
  • It was also named that way because David Byrne was frustrated by people adding a The to the band's name when there wasn't supposed to be one.
• Important Haircut: Inverted with Tina Weymouth, who started in the band with short hair but grew it out around the time of Remain in Light. Played straight when Weymouth cut her hair on Byrne's suggestion upon joining the band.
• Insufferable Genius: The other members came to regard Byrne as this, and on the DVD commentary for Stop Making Sense he admitted that there was some justice to it (see Control Freak, above).
• Intercourse with You: "Creatures of Love", albeit less for the sake of pleasure and more for the purpose of conception. "Sugar on My Tongue" and "Popsicle" are straight examples.
• In the Style of:
  • "The Overload" is in the style of Joy Division, but because Talking Heads had never actually listened to the band, it was based on descriptions of Joy Division's sound that the band had read in the music press. The end result wasn't all that far off from how Joy Division's grimmer material actually sounded (compare "The Overload" to "In a Lonely Place"), although when the Heads finally heard Joy Division they were disappointed that the Manchester band was a lot more conventional than they'd been led to imagine.
  • The rest of the songs on Remain in Light were heavily influenced by Fela Kuti.
  • "Swamp" is an uncharacteristically bluesy number in the style of John Lee Hooker.
• Jerkass: The other members, notably Tina Weymouth as described below, think David Byrne is one. Byrne thinks the other members have been this to him as well.
• Large Ham: Byrne, resulting in such gems as: "Don't you miss it! Don't you miss it! Some of you people just about missed it!" and "And you may say to yourself, My God, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?"
  • The other members have occasionally had large ham tendencies, such as Chris Frantz during Stop Making Sense and Jerry Harrison throughout the music video for "Wild Wild Life".
• Lead Bassist: Tina Weymouth's basslines are funky and melodic. Likely helped by the band's heavy funk influences, where the bass has more of a starring role. A large number of their songs are based (pardon the pun) around a bass riff, and Weymouth seems to get singled out for the most praise for her skill as an instrumentalist. She also contributed songwriting to early Talking Heads songs, particularly the French lyrics in "Psycho Killer," as she is fluent in the language.
• Lead Singer Plays Lead Guitar: Frontman David Byrne also did double-duty as guitarist in the band's early days. While the group recruited Jerry Harrison as their second guitarist shortly before recording their debut album, Byrne still served as the more prominent of the two guitar players, only briefly stepping back to let guest musician Adrian Belew play lead guitar on Remain in Light and its supporting tour. Byrne would additionally stay in the role of lead guitarist in his solo work.
• Lyrical Dissonance: Highlighted in "Life During Wartime."
• Marionette Motion: David Byrne's signature dance moves.
• Military Brat: Both Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. Her dad was an admiral; she says that "Don't Worry About the Government" is inspired in part by that. It was also something that Frantz and Weymouth bonded over.
• Milking the Giant Cow: In the video for "Once in a Lifetime," David Byrne does this while shouting: "My God, WHAT HAVE I DONE?!?," going along with the Large Ham tendencies noted above.
• Mind Screw: "Seen and Not Seen."
• The Movie: True Stories, directed by David Byrne.
• Mundane Made Awesome: The early albums run on it. Who else but Byrne could write lyrics about civil servants and buildings with such conviction? The title of More Songs About Buildings and Food lampshades this. Tina Weymouth even complemented Byrne's songwriting by describing it this way, saying "he could take the mundane and raise it to the sublime."
• Musical Squares: The cover of Remain in Light has the faces of the group, covered with digital red paint, in squares on the cover.
• My God, What Have I Done?: "Once in a Lifetime" coins the phrase.
• New Sound Album: An interesting case in that no album of theirs ever sounded quite like the ones that came before or after it. The most prominent examples, however, are Remain in Light, Little Creatures, and Naked. This was lampshaded by David Byrne in the first appearance of the expanded touring band during the Remain in Light tour, saying: "We don't sound like we used to."
• Non-Appearing Title: "Life During Wartime" and "New Feeling", among others.
• Occidental Otaku: David Byrne's staging for Talking Heads' 1983 tour, as captured in Stop Making Sense, was inspired by Kabuki and Noh theater, including the famous big suit and the stagehands dressed in black visible to the audience.
• Pep-Talk Song: A lot of the band's early songs were these: "New Feeling", "Tentative Decisions", "Don't Worry About the Government", "The Girls Want to Be With the Girls", "The Good Thing". These are what gave the band its early reputation for being clean-cut preppies or even proto-yuppies.
  • Later on, "Road to Nowhere" is a Pep Talk Song about reconciling yourself to the inevitability of death.
• The Perfectionist: Byrne, notoriously so, to the point where it drove Brian Eno away from working with the band after Remain in Light and played a significant factor in the band's 1991 breakup. During the filming of Stop Making Sense for instance, he was so insistent on there being a lack of distractions for the viewer that he wouldn't even permit the band to have cups of water on the stage.
• Pretty Fly for a White Guy: The band's use of funk rhythms came across this way to some critics, even though they worked with members of Parliament-Funkadelic and Brothers Johnson and cited Fela Kuti as an influence.
• Re-Cut:
  • The 2004 double-CD reissue of The Name of This Band is Talking Heads (to this day the only CD release of the live album) added a wealth of extra tracks, with the second disc featuring the 1980-81 Remain in Light tour arranged in the original setlist order. The only drawbacks of this release are that it's noticeably brickwalled and cuts out the extended jam intro to "Crosseyed and Painless" due to space limitations on the CD. For what it's worth, the longer intro was replicated in the finale performance of the song in Stop Making Sense, with this version being fully intact on the film's 15th anniversary soundtrack CD.
  • The cassette release of Speaking in Tongues featured longer versions of "Making Flippy Floppy", "Girlfriend is Better", "Slippery People", "I get Wild/Wild Gravity", and "Moon Rocks", expanding the album by six minutes compared to LP and CD releases. US CDs would switch over to the longer version from 1990 onward, with this configuration also being used for the 2005 remasters worldwide.
  • 2003's Once in a Lifetime Boxed Set included a DVD of the music video compilation Storytelling Giant with three extra videos, "Blind", "(Nothing But) Flowers" and "Sax and Violins", inserted into the running order.
• Reviewer Standard Comparisons: Any indie band with funk or dance influences seems to be compared to Talking Heads, especially if they show an interest in worldbeat.
• Ridiculously Average Guy: David Byrne was purposely trying to be one with his conservative appearance. He ended up gaining a reputation for being anything but average.
• Self-Deprecation: The name of More Songs About Buildings and Food was the result of writer's block when it came to choosing the title of the album.
  Tina Weymouth: When we were making this album [Fear of Music] I remembered this stupid discussion we had about titles for the last album. At that time I said, 'What are we gonna call an album that's just about buildings and food?' And Chris said: "You call it more songs about buildings and food."
• Shout-Out:
  • A spectacularly obscure one in the video for "Once in a Lifetime"— during his time at the Rhode Island School of Design, David Byrne worked at the famed Olneyville New York System hot dog restaurant in Providence. The up the arm chopping motion from his weird, twitchy dancing exactly matches the procedure for putting toppings on a row of short, chili soaked hot dogs.
  • The fighter planes depicted on Remain in Light's back cover are a reference to Tina Weymouth's Military Brat family background. (The planes in question are Grumman Avengers used by the Navy).
  • "Stay Up Late" quotes the line "I know you wanna leave me" from The Temptations' "Ain't Too Proud to Beg."
  • Very YMMV but the girl around 1:12 in "Road to Nowhere"— lion mane, blue striped t-shirt— everything screams "Kim Wilde".
  • The f-bomb In "Sax and Violins" is very reminiscent of "This be the Verse" by Philip Larkin:
    They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
    They may not mean to, but they do.
• Solo Side Project:
  • David Byrne began his solo career while he was still the frontman of Talking Heads, with his first two studio albums independent of the band and his soundtrack to Twyla Harp's dance project The Catherine Wheel all appearing on store shelves while the band was still officially around.^note "Officially" being the operative word; the band dissolved immediately after the release of Naked in 1988, just one year before Byrne released his second album (and solo debut), Rei Momo. However, the band didn't formally announce their breakup until 1991, and as a result, they were technically still considered an actively existing band in 1989. Byrne would continue his solo career after Talking Heads announced their breakup in 1991, released his third studio album (and technical second solo album) just a few months later, and still makes music to this day.
  • Similarly to Byrne, the rest of Talking Heads all began their own side-projects while the band was still active. Jerry Harrison's three solo albums were all released during the 1981-1990 period, while Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth's side-band Tom Tom Club released their first three albums between 1981 and 1988. Like Byrne, Tom Tom Club's career would also outlive Talking Heads, though their output is comparatively more sporadic.
• Spinoff: Frantz and Weymouth's Tom Tom Club.
• Starving Artist: The band in their loft days. In one of the essays in the Once in a Lifetime box set, Chris Frantz recalls eating spaghetti with cottage cheese because meat was too expensive. In the liner notes to the Sand in the Vaseline compilation, Jerry Harrison said that when he first met the other band members at a Chinese restaurant, they had shrimp fried rice because they got the most food for the least money.
• Stop Trick: Used liberally in the video for "Road to Nowhere", such as showing a man and woman having a daughter and growing old.
• Surreal Music Video: The band specialized in this, with the videos for "Once in a Lifetime" and "And She Was" probably being the most standout examples. They were one of the few artists in the '80s who could give Peter Gabriel a run for his money.
• Talkative Loon: David Byrne comes across this way on the band's early songs and in interviews.
• The "The" Title Confusion: There is no "the" in "Talking Heads." Referred to in the title of their live album The Name of This Band is Talking Heads.
  • Chris Frantz notably gets this wrong in Stop Making Sense:
    "We gotta change back into The Talking Heads!"
• Textless Album Cover: More Songs about Buildings and Food.
• Title-Only Chorus: "Blind" whose chorus uses the single word title fourteen times each verse.
• Updated Re-release: In 2005 and 2006, all eight of the band's studio albums were remastered and remixed for 5.1 surround sound by Andy Zax and Jerry Harrison and re-released on both CD and DVD (with the DVDs also containing music videos and other bonus features in addition to the 5.1 mixes). In the United States, the albums were released on DualDisc, an ultimately short-lived format of double-sided optical disc where one side was a CD and the other a DVD^note for a quick explanation as to why DualDisc was short-lived, the format not only faced competition from DVD-Audio, Super Audio CD, and digital downloads, but was also incompatible with certain CD players because the CD side was much thinner than what was specified by Red Book guidelines; this liberty was taken to keep the discs from getting stuck in slot-loading disc drives and changers. These DualDiscs were available both individually and bundled together in a self-titled (and prohibitively expensive) Boxed Set. In Europe, meanwhile, the albums took the simpler route of each being released on a regular CD and DVD in a single jewel case; the DVDs ended up being omitted in later European releases. As of 2020, the 2005/2006 releases are the latest reissues of Talking Heads' studio catalog aside from greatest hits albums. In an odd twist of irony (based on the common trend with CD releases), the 2005/2006 remasters are now out of print, being supplanted by re-pressings of the 1980's CDs.
• Utopia: Deconstructed with "(Nothing But) Flowers", where the singer is utterly bored by the paradisaical garden world he's stuck in, deprived of the luxuries and conveniences of urban life.
• Villain Song: "Psycho Killer".
• Wanderlust Song: "Road to Nowhere" may or may not be this.
• We Used to Be Friends: The general state of David Byrne's relationship with his bandmates, particularly Tina Weymouth. He's on speaking terms with Jerry Harrison and "email terms" with Chris Frantz, but with Weymouth things appeared to remain fairly antagonistic until the band reunited in 2023 to promote the theatrical rerelease of Stop Making Sense.
• Wild Teen Party: One of the interviewees in Storytelling Giant recalls trashing people's houses at these.
• Word Salad Lyrics: David Byrne became fond of these from Remain in Light-onwards, inspired by lyrical techniques used in traditional Nigerian music. "Burning Down the House", for example, is just a list of phrases that fit the rhythm he had composed and loosely fit together thematically.

---

Statler: Same as it ever was.
Waldorf: Same as it ever was.
Statler: Yeah...
Both, in unison: Terrible! Doh ho ho ho...

—Muppets Tonight