The Building That I Want To Live In

Talking Heads “Don’t Worry About the Government”

My listening habits naturally cycle familiar catalogs in and out of rotation, and in some cases I can go a very long time before coming back around to particular artists. A lot of what brings me back to an artist is based on whim or chance, I think in the case of David Byrne and Talking Heads just recently it was sparked by Byrne drastically changing the setlist of his Broadway show and including a few songs from Look Into the Eyeball, which is basically tied with Remain In Light as my favorite record in his body of work. (I know this is an uncommon take.)

I’ve spent a lot of the past few weeks moving to a new apartment, to the point that I found myself walking around the other day trying to get my head into ideas for writing but finding I didn’t really have many active emotions to engage with. I’d been so focused on tasks that I wasn’t really feeling much, or at least not much that would connect to art. And then in a moment of perfect coincidence I heard “Don’t Worry About the Government,” a song that expressed my actual thoughts: “my building has every convenience, it’s gonna make life easy for me, it’s gonna be easy to get things done.”

There’s often a tension in David Byrne’s lyrics between a guileless banality and the insinuation of ironic distance. If you want to hear “Don’t Worry About the Government” as snidely judgmental of a conformist character who does not question his lifestyle it would make a lot of sense, but I think the song works because what he’s saying about the routines of working and living in the world are things most people actually relate to. The character isn’t judging this, everything just is. He feels lucky and blessed to live in a good building, he acknowledges tensions in the world but focuses on the elements of infrastructure that work, and the civil servants who do their jobs well. The music feels like a pleasant equilibrium, the sentiment is all benign neutrality. It’s tremendously effective as a compelling piece of music that approaches feelings and ideas most would consider too dull for music.

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Talking Heads “Stay Up Late”

Byrne has spent a lot of his career essentially figuring out how to make unlikely sentiments and ideas work in music, and in subverting the tropes of popular music. In “Stay Up Late,” an up tempo tune from Little Creatures in 1985, seems to start from the premise of approaching the ubiquity of the word “baby” in pop music and taking it very literally. From a bit of distance “Stay Up Late” sounds like it’s about the usual stuff of pop music – flirtation, partying, sex – but the lyrics are actually about a kid who is excited to have a new baby sibling and thinks of him as a “plaything.” The idea of keeping the baby up all night is a weirdly transgressive thought, it’s a child’s notion of hedonism. Byrne embraces the innocence of the character while suggesting the parallels to adult behavior, a fundamental urge for fun that’s shaped by the context of childhood in the 20th century.

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David Byrne “Everyone’s In Love With You”

“Everyone’s In Love With You” has a very rom-com tone but approaches a romantic relationship from an unexpected angle: it’s a song about a guy who has noticed that since he’s been with this person, everyone he knows is also totally smitten with her too. His emotional response is interesting – he’s jealous, he’s proud, he feels a bit left out, he feels like the lesser half of the couple. (“I’m introduced to so-and-so but you’re the one they want to know.”) It’s a very sweet song, one that expresses a deep admiration for this person and the humility of understanding that he’s just got to share her with the world rather than keeping her his “big secret.”

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