Comes on silver vinyl 2LP.
How Lorde, Paramore, Blondshell, and More Are Fueling a Talking Heads Revival
A new Stop Making Sense tribute album reveals how the iconic art-pop band has inspired a new generation of artists — even if members say a reunion is still a long shot
Growing up in Texas in the 2000s, new-generation rap-rock star Teezo Touchdown was largely unfamiliar with Talking Heads. But as he was making his own records and plotting a stage show, some of his colleagues thought he’d be inspired by the band and called up a clip from its 1984 concert movie, Stop Making Sense. “The opening shot of David Byrne coming out with a boombox and doing ‘Psycho Killer’ — I had a true discovery moment,” Teezo recalls. “With what he was doing, and the production and the visuals, they had the total package. It’s still fresh.”
Talking Heads haven’t toured since 1983 and haven’t released a new album in 36 years. But the use of their songs in everything from Gilmore Girls and Wall Street up through Byrne’s American Utopia stage musical and movie has kept their music in the public ear, along with a steady stream of covers by Florence + the Machine, Cage the Elephant, Eddie Vedder, and others.
The revival culminated in last year’s successful rerelease of a newly restored Stop Making Sense in theaters through distributor A24, and the sight of the four band members — Byrne, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth, and Chris Frantz — putting aside their much-documented rancor and promoting the film together, often to ecstatic cheers from audiences. “I assumed — I guess wrongly — that memory fades away, and that at some point, you’re kind of a ‘Where are they now?’ like you see on one of those cheesy documentaries,” Byrne says with a laugh. “But that didn’t happen. That’s really surprising and flattering.” Frantz adds that he was especially impressed by the roar that greeted them on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert: “It was an awesome feeling.”
The second part of that revival arrives May 17 with Everyone’s Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense. As covers records go, it’s unusual on several levels: a salute not just to the band but also to that iconic movie’s soundtrack. And it includes versions by not just a few established artists, like Miley Cyrus (“Psycho Killer”), Lorde (“Take Me to the River”), Paramore (“Burning Down the House”), and the National (“Heaven”), but just as many by newer acts from around the world: Teezo (“Making Flippy Floppy”), the L.A. funk band Chicano Batman (“Crosseyed and Painless”), Norwegian pop star Girl in Red (“Girlfriend Is Better”), Nigerian American DJ Tunez (“Life During Wartime”), the Argentine indie band Él Mató a un Policía Motorizado (“Slippery People”), and others. “They bring a good, new, fresh energy to this project,” says Frantz. “We in Talking Heads, we’re senior citizens now. I get a discount almost everywhere now.” (www.rollingstone.com)
