Trivia / Fear of Music

• Creator Breakdown: A surprisingly mild yet still significant example; the increasingly paranoid musical and lyrical tone of the album was heavily influenced by the burnout frontman David Byrne was starting to feel from constant performing and touring as the band's star continued to rise. This is most openly illustrated in "Heaven", in which the perpetually active Byrne cites his idea of the titular realm as a place where he can finally sit down, relax, and live a stable life for once.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: In a 1997 interview, Jerry Harrison listed "I Zimbra" as his favorite Talking Heads song.
• Enforced Method Acting: Byrne ran on the spot so that his vocal on "Drugs" would sound appropriately exhausted.
• Feelies: Vinyl copies of the album cover were embossed in a pattern similar to industrial diamond-plated metal flooring. Incidentally, because of the difficulty involved with replicating this cover on CD releases (as the LP sleeve minus the embossing is just stark black with a green title logo), most tend to simply use a scan of a spare LP copy.
• Inspiration for the Work: The idea for the album cover came from a visit by the band members to Tina's brother, architect Yann Weymouth, whose apartment was decked out with diamond-plate floor treads. The same pattern would be embossed on the LP cover.
• Technology Marches On: At the time the album was recorded, recording a regular, professional-quality album at home was both unusual and difficult: the band had to store the recording equipment in a van outside (a technique normally used for recording live performances) and run wires through the upstairs windows to connect the microphones. Today, DAW software offers musicians professional quality at home to the point where many professional studios have closed, making home recordings routine.
• What Could Have Been: The liner notes include a number of verses on several tracks not actually included in the final edits of the associated songs, indicating that the tracks were originally much longer before being edited down to fit on a single LP. While alternate edits and live performances include these excised lyrics (albeit dropping verses from the studio version in exchange), the presumed full versions of these songs have yet to be made publicly available, officially or not.

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