Start Making Nonsense: inside ‘Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’
With a bunch of buzzy contributors from Paramore to girl in red to Blondshell, brand new compilation ‘Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense’ is a celebration of one of the best and most influential albums of all time.
With a bunch of buzzy contributors from Paramore to girl in red to Blondshell, brand new compilation ‘Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense’ is a celebration of one of the best and most influential albums of all time.
Words: Jake Hawkes.
Few bands are as influential as Talking Heads. Emerging from the New York punk scene and iconic venue CBGB, the group quickly cemented themselves as one of the best and most inventive in a field crowded by the likes of Blondie, The Ramones, and Television.
This reputation only increased once they started working with everyone’s favourite pioneer of ambient music, Brian Eno. The resulting run, ‘More Songs About Buildings and Food’, ‘Fear of Music’, and ‘Remain in Light’ still stand up as some of the best, most genre-defying albums around. Mainstream success, ‘Burning Down the House’, a song which gave Radiohead their name (yes, really), and ‘Stop Making Sense’, one of the greatest concert films of all time, followed before they went on hiatus then officially split in 1991. Aside from an onstage reunion at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, the band have never reformed.
Cut to the present, and you can barely swing a cat without hitting a band who proudly proclaim Talking Heads as one of their biggest influences. London’s MOTH Club even hosts a semi-regular ‘David Byrne’s Night’, where everyone from Shame to Sports Team has taken a turn at a Talking Heads cover or two. Judging by the night’s addition to this year’s Wide Awake Festival, it’s been quite a popular idea.
“So what?” we hear you cry. Well, Dear Reader, this isn’t just a history lesson to fill a few pages. If you’d only stick with us for a little bit longer, we’ll reveal what it’s all been leading towards. A 2023 IMAX remaster of Stop Making Sense by everyone’s favourite indie film company, A24, sent the rumour mill about what could come next into overdrive, especially when the band all took part in a Q+A to celebrate the re-release.
Even more exciting for us here at Dork HQ was the announcement of ‘Everyone’s Invited’, a cover album featuring the songs from ‘Stop Making Sense’ as reimagined by the likes of Miley Cyrus, Teezo Touchdown, Lorde, The Linda Lindas, Blondshell and more. If any more evidence was needed that everyone on the planet loves Talking Heads, this was it.
WHAT A DAY THAT WAS
We’ve all been there: it’s a Saturday, you’ve got nothing to do, you’re relaxing on the sofa, when suddenly the doorbell goes. Oh no, it’s David Byrne, and you promised you’d spend the day with him! Don’t worry; we’ve crowdsourced some options for you (you can thank us later).
The Linda Lindas
→ Eloise: First we take him for boba and see what his order is. Then we probably just take him to loads of places to go and eat. Maybe we’d go bowling, but we aren’t very good at it. Over the course of the day, we’d come up with a nickname for him to use when we play bowling, so that’s why we need to do it last.
→Bela: We’d also be riding bikes all day between these activities, just to set the scene.
Blondshell
→ I’m kinda lazy. I don’t really do much stuff; I just hang out. I wanna see what he does with his time; I’m not interested in showing him the places I go; he doesn’t need to go to them. What’s his spot? Where does he go for food?
Teezo Touchdown
→ I’d probably take him to the rehearsal space and just see what I could soak in from him. I’d just want to pick his brain on everything.
Well, maybe not quite everyone. Teezo Touchdown’s take on ‘Making Flippy Floppy’ may be an album highlight, but the Texan rapper hadn’t even heard of the band before A24 reached out to him. “They had to send me over some music so I could do my research,” he says with a laugh. “But it turns out they have so many funky jams and great writing. For me, it’s the ultimate aim – for someone to discover your music years later and for it to still be as fresh as Talking Heads sound. It’s timeless music.”
For others, no introduction was necessary. “I’ve been a fan my whole life, so this is incredible,” enthuses Blondshell. “I remember hearing ‘This Must Be the Place’ in eighth grade and having never heard anything like it in my life – because there isn’t anything like it. I was this adolescent searching for music that could speak to me, and I was really moved by it from the second I heard it.”
Photo Credit: Rachel Bickert
“I have no idea when I first heard them,” says Lucia de la Garza, guitarist of The Linda Lindas. “Somehow, you just know all the songs; they’re always around. It’s crazy; we got this offer and were scrolling through their discography, and they have so many hits – it’s phenomenal!”
Enduring popularity is one thing, but for a band to have impacted artists from so many genres may be even more impressive. This is in part down to a seemingly endless supply of absolute bangers, but also because Talking Heads were never shy of innovating, evolving from the scrappy, preppy punk band of ‘Talking Heads: 77’ to the sprawling nine-piece live band you see in Stop Making Sense, all without sacrificing their identity in the process.
(NOTHING BUT) BANGERS
Obviously, the people involved in the Talking Heads tribute album are going to have favourite songs, but what about Dork’s favourite musicians? What about us?! Here are the top Talking Heads tracks, as picked by our favourite artists (Who could get back to us on a very tight turnaround because we left this part until last – Ed).
‘AND SHE WAS’
→ It’s about a kind of tacky transcendence, but it’s got this willingness to lean into it that feels very honest to me. Alex Rice, Sports Team
‘Crosseyed and Painless’
→ So much percussion, a high charting dance single, and extra points for the fake-out on ‘Stop Making Sense’. Sean Murphy-O’Neill, Courting
‘Pull Up the Roots’
→ If you have the aux cord at a house party, drop this tune, and you can’t not want to dance. It goes down a treat. Panic Shack
‘Take Me To The River’
→ Our favourite Talking Heads song has got to be ‘Take Me To The River’. This may be a cop-out, considering it’s a cover, but they completely made it their own whilst respecting where the song came from. It’s Tina Weymouth at her very best and we can’t help but get real stinky bass faces going on whenever we hear it. There are some beautiful slight tempo changes that happen in the song that make it such a magical recording in the sense that it just feels like they were jamming and the engineer hit the record button. Human Interest
‘Heaven - Live’ from ‘Stop Making Sense (Live)’
→ Tina Weymouth totally carries this whole tune; she’s so underrated. It’s such a simple, cool performance and they’ve both got seamless chemistry. Abbie Ozard
‘This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)’
→ To be honest, I think ‘This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody)’ is one of the greatest songs ever written and one of the most romantic, too. I love that they swapped instruments to write it as well! Walt Disco
“I don’t think they thought about music in terms of genre,” says Blondshell. “Just watching them on stage when I went to the remastered screening, I was struck by how full the band is and how many different pieces there are. All the genres you associate them with – new wave, rock, avant-garde, none of those had these insanely full bands where the whole stage was filled with people. They were just doing something so different, so much greater than just one genre. That’s why it makes sense for the covers album to pick people from so many different lanes.”
Along with assembling an Ocean’s Eleven style crack team spanning the range of Kevin Abstract to The National, ‘Everybody’s Invited’ also sees each artist doing some impressive tightrope walking of making the songs their own, without ruining what makes the original so fun. There’s Miley Cyrus’ absolutely bonkers disco-laced take on ‘Psycho Killer’, Girl in Red’s funky handclap spin on ‘Girlfriend is Better’, and, of course, Paramore’s incredible reimagining of ‘Burning Down The House’, which served as the album’s lead single.
Photo Credit: Wendy Lau.
Not that a straightforward covers album was ever really on the table. “We couldn’t even attempt to sound like Talking Heads!” says Lucia, to laughs from the rest of the band.
“A bunch of the timing is weird; there are all these extra beats added in,” agrees Linda Lindas bassist Eloise Wong. “We just sort of cut bits out and straightened it out to make it easier for us to play, but it was so enjoyable to do. It’s a great thing to do, but for us, the real fun is being connected to the whole CBGB scene.”
“Sitting down and taking everything apart to analyse it is so cool,” adds guitarist and singer Bela Salazar. “You realise how much goes into the song, but also how when all these bits are put back together, it forms something really beautiful.”
“I actually learned how David Byrne sings, and I came in and sang for hours like he does, until the producer said, ‘This is not going to work’,” says Blondshell. “Although I never wanted to do David Byrne’s version of the song because he already sang it, and I would never do it justice. The songwriting is so good that I realised I could do it my way with my band and the producer I always use, and it’d still sound like Talking Heads, so that’s what we did.”
PULL UP THE ROOTS
Eight studio albums, eleven years – there’s a lot of Talking Heads to listen to. But what should you listen to first? We asked our interviewees what their favourite Talking Heads song was, so you don’t have to.
The Linda Lindas
→Bela: My favourite is ‘Road to Nowhere’ because David Byrne did a musical a couple of years ago, and seeing him play that song live was awesome.
→ Eloise: I just love their vibe. I love their energy and how they’re not afraid to explore and be different in their sound and be super creative and wild with it. Everything is so easy to dance to; you can have a different dance move to everything as well.
Blondshell
→ It has to be ‘This Must Be The Place’ because it was the first one I heard, and it wasn’t overshadowed by who they were or how famous it was. It was just an unbelievable song that spoke to my heart when I was an adolescent kid who was angsty and moody and needed music that spoke to me.
Teezo Touchdown
→ ‘Once in a Lifetime’, because I love the repeated line “you may ask yourself…”. It gives form to the idea of constantly questioning yourself every day as an artist, so it really grabbed me.
To have a room full of musicians leaping at the chance to cover their songs is a mark of influence that most bands never reach. There are other albums in a similar vein, although not many – 2010’s ‘We Were So Turned On’ Bowie album and the 1991 ‘Two Rooms’ Elton John tribute stand out as high profile (and in parts high quality) examples, but what sets ‘Everybody’s Invited’ apart is that it’s a tribute to a film, not a studio album. “The theatrics of what David Byrne does on stage are what grabbed me,” says Teezo. “When I was in marching band, we were taught that you have to make big movements so that the people at the back of the stadium can see you, and that’s what David Byrne does. That style, that performance, they’re what people bring up to me about Talking Heads when I’m preparing for tours. They’ve been in the zeitgeist for me because of the visual side of things, so it’s cool to tie the threads together with a musical counterpart.”
“You can see how proud they are of the film,” says Lucia. “And they’re proud of it for good reason! They’ve got their reasons for reuniting around the film, but it’s great for us to be able to have fun going along with it.”
Photo Credit: Morgan Maher.
Talk of theatrical logistics and complex songwriting risk making it sound like Talking Heads have become the thinking person’s favourite band, more suited for chin-stroking and high-fidelity sound systems than sweaty clubs. It’s a reputation that’s always clung to them, especially when their preppy style was thrown into sharp relief on tours with leather-clad punks like The Ramones. “There’s those intellectual parts, the technical stuff they do, for sure,” says Blondshell. “But for but the music speaks to me in this instinctual, guttural way. When I first fell in love with them, I didn’t know anything about music - when I saw ‘Stop Making Sense’, I didn’t know anything about stagecraft - but the words David Byrne says and the way he sings feels so genuine and true that it just spoke to me.”
It’s not just childhood nostalgia or musical legacy that makes ‘Everybody’s Invited’ such a joyful celebration of Talking Heads, though. “This album is going to be someone’s first time discovering Talking Heads,” says Teezo. “I’m excited for that, for a lot of people to discover this great music by a group of great musicians. Discovery never gets old.” ■
Taken from the June 2024 issue of Dork. 'Everyone's Getting Involved: A Tribute To Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense' is out now.
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