YMMV / Talking Heads

• Anvilicious: In the last verse of "Found a Job", after the earlier lyrics tell a story about a couple who creates a TV show:
  Now think about this little scene
  Apply it to your life
  If your work isn't what you love,
  Then something isn't right
• Audience-Alienating Era: Fans tend to hold Talking Heads' latter-day albums in lower regard than their predecessors. In the case of True Stories, this is attributable to its relatively straightforward rock sound far-removed from their other, more eclectic albums (not to mention that it was solely the product of Executive Meddling). Naked meanwhile is better-regarded, but still divisive due to a belief that it's still aimless compared to the band's best works, with the single "(Nothing But) Flowers" being the only well-remembered song off of it (and even then it had to be Vindicated by History). Finally, No Talking, Just Head is even less popular than the above two with fans, critics, and the band themselves thanks to it being a The Band Minus the Face album with even less of a sense of direction.
• Critical Dissonance: Naked was widely regarded by contemporary critics as a return to form after the divisively straightforward style of True Stories before it. Among fans, it's considerably more divisive apart from the two singles associated with it, "Blind" and "(Nothing But) Flowers".
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Although Byrne is unquestionably the face of the band, Weymouth is probably the second most popular band member on the strength of her bass playing, especially since the bass is such a central part of their music. Their heavy funk influence no doubt helps here, too.
• Epic Riff:
  • The bassline of "Psycho Killer". One of the very few basslines where just the first nine notes makes the crowd go nuts. It's also the only Talking Heads song that Tom Tom Club plays live.
  • The bass line of "Take Me to the River" probably also counts. And "Once in a Lifetime"... half of Talking Heads' songs probably depend on Tina's bass more than on any other instrument, really.
• Fan Nickname: Frantz's steady drumming led to the nickname "The Human Drum Machine".
• Fanon Discontinuity:
  • The 41-minute cut of Speaking in Tongues, which bites for vinyl lovers given that it's the only version available on LP.
  • Most fans choose to ignore the band's attempts at continuing Talking Heads without David Byrne, especially No Talking, Just Head, largely due to the animosity behind the continuation and the poor quality of the album even on its own merits.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • A noticeable overlap exists between Talking Heads fans and Peter Gabriel fans, largely owing to Gabriel being a fan of the band and of David Byrne's solo efforts (with Byrne reciprocating the admiration) and due to Gabriel & Byrne being considered kindred spirits in their affinity for eclectic art pop with heavy worldbeat elements, surreal music videos, and appealingly odd live shows.
  • There's also an overlap between King Crimson and Talking Heads, mainly due to guitarist Robert Fripp's appearance on "I Zimbra" as well as future King Crimson frontman Adrian Belew's appearances on both Remain in Light and its supporting tour. Talking Heads fans have discovered the Discipline-era lineup, then have sought out other eras of the band as well as other Progressive Rock bands. King Crimson fans, generally prog rock fans skeptical of Punk Rock, appreciate Talking Heads for their greater experimentation compared to other punk/new wave acts of the era.
  • An overlap with Devo fans also exists, given that the two bands were the biggest and most prominent members of the American side of the otherwise British-dominated Post-Punk movement. Devo's sampling of "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" for the single version of "Disco Dancer" and Mark Mothersbaugh & Jerry Casale's collaboration with Byrne on his solo song "Wicked Little Doll" additionally factor into the overlap.
  • There's yet another overlap with The B-52s, again due to a similar style and collaboration with members, to the point where David Byrne produced the Mesopotamia EP and Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth played with the band at the 1985 Rock in Rio concert.
• Gateway Series: For lots of rock fans, the band is a gateway into Funk and all kinds of dance music.
• Genius Bonus: Inevitable with a band where three of the four members went to RISD and another to Harvard (Jerry Harrison).
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • Talking Heads have quite the following in the United Kingdom (fitting, given how they were initially part of a musical movement that was almost entirely British-dominated and collaborated with Brian Eno and Robert Fripp, the guitarist and leader of King Crimson; David Byrne himself was a U.K. citizen by birth before acquiring American citizenship), to the point where when their entire back-catalog was remastered and reissued in 2005, Britain received exclusive CD + DVD-Audio versions of each of their albums (the US versions of these releases pressed them onto the much-hyped but short-lived DualDisc format). Additionally, it's not too uncommon to find secondhand copies of their albums from British sellers on sites like eBay and Amazon.
  • On a regional level, the San Francisco Bay Area is mentioned as a "stronghold" of Talking Heads fandom in the DVD Commentary for Stop Making Sense.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Lampshaded by Byrne when announcing his post-9/11 performances of "Life During Wartime", saying that the song is "more inappropriate now than it was then."
  • Peter Gabriel performed a piano cover of "Listening Wind" and noted that the song, which describes a man seeing his culture overtaken by Americans and bombing them in response, and plays it sympathetically, could not be written in the age of The War on Terror.
  • NASA played "Burning Down the House" as a wake-up call for the astronauts on Columbia's final mission.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Prior to forming Talking Heads with Tina Weymouth, David Byrne and Chris Frantz were in a group that were alternatively called the Artistics and the Autistics; over a decade and a half after Talking Heads' dissolution, Byrne would discover and reveal that he himself was autistic.
  • In "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" David Byrne refers to himself as "a tumbler."
  • Apparently, there is water at the bottom of the ocean.
  • "Found a Job", about a couple making their own shows that are better than TV, predicted YouTube and made-for-internet films and videos almost 30 years in advance.
  • "Radio Head" contains the line "The sound of a brand new dawn". Considering how popular the band who got their name from this song became, it wasn't entirely wrong.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The giant white suit from Stop Making Sense.
  • SAME AS IT EVER WAS; arguably the entirety of "Once in a Lifetime".
• Misaimed Fandom: Many listeners have taken "Life During Wartime" and interpreted it as dance music. Ironically, it's the exact opposite of what the song is advocating, in that during wartime era, there's very little time to party due to fear of impending doom.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • "Unison" is a demo that appears on the 2005 reissue of Remain In Light and it's a catchy, but chilling and eerie song that echoes the lo-fi sound of early Devo. It doesn't help that it opens with a sharp, ear piercing synth note.
  • "The Democratic Circus" starts out like a cheerful ditty about the circus, and gradually turns into a vision of apocalypse.
  • "Cool Water", a droning, minor-key piece about discrimination and social decay that uses the Boléro Effect to a frighteningly effective degree.
  • "Psycho Killer" may have a catchy rhythm behind it, but it still describes a psychotic Serial Killer undergoing extreme Sanity Slippage.
  • "Drugs" is David Byrne's recount of his horrific experiences with drugs, and with how the minimalism of the song creates a hazy, unnerving experience, he managed to recapture his horrors quite well.
• Periphery Demographic:
  • While the band was marketed to white rock fans, they were able to attract a sizable black audience on the strength of their funk influences as well as working with members of two prominent funk groups in their expanded lineup: Parliament-Funkadelic and Brothers Johnson. The strength of this black following allowed them to cross over onto the R&B charts in the early 1980s. This can be seen most clearly in the audience shots at the end of Stop Making Sense. Through this audience, Talking Heads might have been as instrumental as Prince or Michael Jackson in breaking down the musical color barrier that had been erected in the wake of the demise of disco.
  • The band has also consistently been able to garner audiences of younger music listeners, even decades after they split up and long after mainstream rock went dormant. A lot of this can be owed to a combination of their still-unique sound, relatable lyrics that take the piss out of the minutiae of everyday life (something that touches especially closely with 2010s and, by extension, 2020s humor), and David Byrne's own continuing emphasis on social consciousness and breaking down barriers (exemplified both by his conscious and vocal attempts to properly acknowledge and pay homage to non-western cultures rather than shamelessly stealing from them and by him being a rare example of a successful autistic musician — specifically having Asperger's Syndrome — the latter of which has earned him and Talking Heads a noticeable following within the autistic community).
• Popularity Polynomial: The band were widely acclaimed by both fans and critics in the first half of their careers, to the point where the underselling Remain in Light became one of the first CDs released in the west off of audience goodwill alone. However, a shift to mainstream pop rock in the mid-'80s would crater their reputation, and the mixed responses towards Naked's attempts at returning to the worldbeat of Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues (at a time when worldbeat was sharply declining in popularity) only hammered more nails into the coffin; by the time David Byrne dissolved the band in 1991, they were satirized as microcosms of '80s cheese in works like American Psycho. However, the 15th anniversary reissue of Stop Making Sense, the 2003 Once in a Lifetime box set release, the belated 2004 CD release of The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads, the 2005 remastering campaign, and Byrne's slow climb back into the limelight as a solo artist in the 2000s and 2010s convinced listeners to revisit Talking Heads and rediscover why they got so big in the first place. Nowadays, they're considered one of the best acts of their time, though their last two albums are still middlingly regarded.
• Sequelitis: Seemed to hit the band after Remain in Light. Whereas Remain in Light is considered Talking Heads' best album, their attempts at following up each seemed to be worse than the last. Speaking in Tongues is considered a fantastic synth-funk album, but isn't commonly seen as on par with or above Remain in Light; it typically rivals Fear of Music for the position of the band's second-best album. Little Creatures is also well-regarded by both critics and fans, but is considered to be closer to the middle of the road compared to its predecessors. True Stories meanwhile is outright reviled by critics, and while it does get more love from fans, they tend to agree that it's Talking Heads' artistic nadir. Naked was considered to be the album that broke the streak; while it's not ranked at the level of Remain in Light, it was generally seen as a much-needed return to form, hampered only by the fact that it ended up being the band's last album.
• Signature Song: "Psycho Killer", "Life During Wartime", "Once in a Lifetime", and "Burning Down the House" are their biggest contenders, while "Road to Nowhere" and "Girlfriend Is Better" are not far behind. In particular, "Burning Down the House" was the band's #1 hit single in the States. Interestingly, "Once in a Lifetime" barely made a splash when it was first released as a single but skyrocketed in popularity once its music video started getting heavy rotation on MTV.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Vampire Weekend seems to have taken up the mantle of indie rock fused with Afrobeat with a geeky frontman that Talking Heads pioneered. Like the Talking Heads, Vampire Weekend hails from the northeastern U.S. and has a "preppy" image similar to Talking Heads' early days.
  • Prog Archives compared Byrne to Genesis-era Peter Gabriel for his penchant for bizarre theatrics and wacky costumes during the band's 1983 tour, as captured in Stop Making Sense; Byrne's solo concerts have kept up the kinds of inventive staging seen in the film.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "Heaven", in which heaven is like a bar where your favourite song is always being played, and nothing ever changes, and everything is always like how you left it, and that's what's good about it. Byrne later said that the idea that heaven was like a bar where nothing ever happened came from the experience of being a touring rock star, when life was constantly being interrupted.
    Heaven, heaven is a place
    A place where nothing, nothing ever happens
  • Despite its bouncy and upbeat instrumentation, there's still a deep sense of existential despair in "Once in a Lifetime" and its bleak depiction of being hopelessly pulled by the currents of fate into a banal and uneventful middle-class existence.
  • While described by David Byrne as flippantly cheerful in tone, one can't help but find an underlying sadness in "Road to Nowhere" and its quiet nihilistic resignation towards life. The music video certainly doesn't help, particularly the scene documenting the life of a romantic couple, from meeting, to starting a family, to growing old and dying.
  • "Sax and Violins" can come off as this when put into context; while it was the very last song Talking Heads put out before their breakup in 1991, they had already been more or less "done" as a unit since the release of Naked in 1988. Byrne's lyrics and the song's almost melancholy tone, combined with the context make the song seem less like Talking Heads being Talking Heads and more a band coming to the realization that they'll have to go their separate ways in both life and music.
• Tough Act to Follow:
  • The reason the band never played live again after the tour for Speaking in Tongues, as captured in Stop Making Sense. As explained in the "self-interview" available on the DVD, the band would only tour if they felt they had something new to say, rather than just supporting a new album, and it seems as if those new messages never quite sprung up.
  • Since its release in 1980, the album Remain in Light has consistently received rapturous praise from fans and critics alike, often being considered not only the band's best album, but also one of the greatest albums of the 1980s— if not all time. Between Remain in Light and Naked, the band's following albums were released to exponentially diminishing returns, as documented under Sequelitis above.
  • While David Byrne has had a successful solo career, Jerry has had a successful producing career, and both Tina and Chris have done well with Tom Tom Club, critics still hold their work with Talking Heads in higher regard. Byrne himself commented on the frustration surrounding this in a 2004 Associated Press feature:
    David Byrne: I have to remind myself, "David, don't complain. The fact that you did something and it was exactly what you wanted to do creatively and people really liked it, that's a kind of rare opportunity to have." [What I hold myself back from saying is] "Hey, guy, I've been active for the last 15 years! I haven't been sitting on my butt! I've done a lot of stuff, and it's not all artsy-fartsy stuff. Some of them are regular records. And the fact that I don't get played on MTV or the radio, it's not my fault!"
  • It's to the point where, when the band members reunited to promote the A24 re-release of Stop Making Sense, hardcore fans were hoping they didn't tour or release new music together. With the diminishing returns after that film's release and the inner band conflict being so well known to the public, they didn't want the good things the band did to be tarnished.
• Win Back the Crowd: Naked was praised by critics as a return to form after the diminishing returns of the post-Remain in Light albums; unfortunately, it also turned out to be Talking Heads' last album, with the band (officially) parting ways three years later.

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