Talking Heads seem to keep being quoted. Everywhere I look, at the start of new books I pick up, in art journals and papers. They seem to have hit on quite a lot in their career. Luckily on this blog, I can happily quote from wiki talking about 'Remain in Light', their magnum opus;
"The members of Talking Heads wanted to make an album that dispelled notions of frontman and chief lyricist David Byrne leading a back-up band. They decided to experiment with African polyrhythms and, with Eno, recorded the instrumental tracks as a series of samples and loops, a novel idea at the time. The lyric writing process slowed Remain in Light's progress, but was concluded after Byrne drew inspiration from academic literature on Africa."
"The band members realised that it had been solely up to Byrne to bear the creative burden of crafting songs even though the tracks were performed as a quartet. The conception of Remain in Light occurred partly because they tired of the notion of a singer leading a back-up band; the ideal they aimed for, according to Byrne, was "sacrificing our egos for mutual cooperation". The frontman additionally wanted to escape "the psychological paranoia and personal torment" of what he had been writing and feeling in 1970s New York City. Instead of the band writing music to Byrne's lyrics, Talking Heads performed instrumental sessions without words using the Fear of Music song "I Zimbra" as a starting point.
"...decided to experiment with the communal African way of making music, in which individual parts mesh as polyrhythms to create a cohesive whole.Afrodisiac, the 1973 Afrobeat record from Nigerian musician Fela Kuti, became the template for the album. Weymouth has commented that the advent of the 1980s marked the beginnings of hip-hop music, which made Talking Heads realise that the musical landscape was changing. Before the studio sessions, long-time friend David Gans instructed the band members that "the things one doesn’t intend are the seeds for a more interesting future". He encouraged them to experiment and improvise when recording and to utilise "mistakes". The ambition was to blend rock and African genres, rather than simply imitate African music. Eno's production techniques and personal approach were key to the record's conception. The process was geared to promote the expression of instinct and spontaneity without overtly focusing on the sound of the final product. The band's performances and jam sessions acted as sampling and looping mechanisms.
The tracks made Byrne rethink his vocal style and he tried singing to the instrumental songs, but sounded "stilted".
Byrne recorded all the tracks, as they were after Belew had performed, in a cassette and looked to Africa to break his writer's block. He realised that, when African musicians forget words, they often improvise and make new ones up. The lyricist used a portable tape recorder and tried to create onomatopoeic rhymes in the style of Eno, who believed that lyrics were never the centre of a song's meaning. Byrne continuously listened to his recorded scatting until convinced that he was no longer "hearing nonsense".
The final mass-produced version of Remain in Light boasted one of the first computer-designed record jackets in the history of music. Psychoanalyst Michael A. Brog has called its front cover a "disarming image, which suggests both splitting and obliteration of identity" and which introduces the listener to the album's recurring theme of "identity disturbance"; he states, "The image is in bleak contrast to the title with the obscured images of the band members unable to 'remain in light'."
The band expanded to nine musicians for the tours in support of the album.
The major inspiration to the lyrics was Professor John Miller Chernoff's African Rhythm and African Sensibility, which examined the musical enhancement of life in the continent's rural communities and Professor Robert Farris Thompson's book African Art in Motion. He additionally studied straight speech, from John Dean's Watergate testimony to the stories of African American former slaves.
"Once in a Lifetime" borrows heavily from preachers' diatribes. Some critics have suggested that the song is "a kind of prescient jab at the excesses of the 1980s". Byrne disagreed with the categorisation and commented that its lyrics are meant to be taken literally; he stated, "We're largely unconscious. You know, we operate half awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we haven't really stopped to ask ourselves, 'How did I get here?'."
"Once in a Lifetime" pays homage to early rap techniques and the music of art rock band The Velvet Underground. The track was originally called "Weird Guitar Riff Song" because of its composition.
The final track on the album, "The Overload," was Talking Heads' attempt to emulate the sound of British post-punk band Joy Division. The song was made despite no band member having heard the music of Joy Division; rather, it was based on an idea of what the British quartet might sound like based on descriptions in the music press." (in case you're curious, here it is)
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