{"id":1082553,"date":"2026-07-11T11:00:21","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1082553\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T11:00:21","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T11:00:21","slug":"the-1979-song-that-kickstarted-talking-heads-second-phase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/1082553\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1979 song that kickstarted Talking Heads&#8217; second phase"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img width=\"1140\" height=\"855\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Talking-Heads-Tina-Weymouth-Jerry-Harrison-David-Byrne-Chris-Frantz-1977-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.j.jpeg\" class=\"attachment-single-feature size-single-feature wp-post-image\" alt=\"Talking Heads - Tina Weymouth - Jerry Harrison - David Byrne - Chris Frantz - 1977\" layout=\"fill\"  style=\"object-position: 50% 20%\" loading=\"eager\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Credit: Far Out \/ Sire Records<\/p>\n<p> Sat 11 July 2026 8:00, UK <\/p>\n<p>Even from their earliest singles, it was obvious that <a href=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/tags\/talking-heads\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">Talking Heads<\/a> weren\u2019t your typical band, and people were rightfully tipping them to have a significant impact on the trajectory of rock music.<\/p>\n<p>There was a groove within their work twinned with an awkward jankiness that didn\u2019t seem to have been present anywhere else in contemporary music, at least when it came to what was familiar to Western audiences. On top of this, frontman David Byrne adopted a bizarre approach to lyricism that deliberately avoided typical subject matter, and while he was evidently good at writing love songs, he much preferred to zoom in on more abstract themes, inanimate objects and the minutiae of everyday life.<\/p>\n<p>\u2018Love \u2192 Building on Fire\u2019 and <a href=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/the-talking-heads-song-that-will-outlive-psycho-killer\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\u2018Once In A Lifetime\u2019: the Talking Heads song that will outlive \u2018Psycho Killer\u2019\">\u2018Psycho Killer\u2019 were tremendous early indicators of Byrne\u2019s genius<\/a>, and their second album, More Songs About Buildings and Food, would only amplify their quirks, even if it didn\u2019t mark a significant step forward from what they\u2019d done on their debut album.<\/p>\n<p>However, because it wasn\u2019t abundantly clear at this point where they\u2019d end up going in the future, nobody knew whether they\u2019d quietly continue peddling the same brand of inventive rock songs or if they\u2019d push the boat out further to create something more confounding. They were already hard to predict, and frankly, their third album, Fear of Music, was not something that many could have foreseen coming.<\/p>\n<p>With Brian Eno having been at the helm for the production of their second album and invited back to do the same for its follow-up, it was clear that they wanted to use his expertise to push on and create more expansive and elaborate works like Eno had already demonstrated through his work as a solo artist, with Roxy Music, and as producer for David Bowie on his Berlin Trilogy. Throughout the creative process, the band and Eno were dining out on a healthy diet of music from all corners of the world, with Byrne and Eno developing a particular fascination with the Afrobeat stylings of Fela Kuti.<\/p>\n<p>This worldly approach that became more apparent on Fear of Music is something that keyboard and guitar player Jerry Harrison believed was the greatest sign of the band having moved things forward as a unit, and he proclaimed during a 1997 interview with Liquid Audio that the album\u2019s opening track, \u2018I Zimbra\u2019, was the greatest turning point for the band.<\/p>\n<p>Going as far as to call it his favourite song he ever made with the group, he said that the groove-laden track with all of its overlapping rhythms <a href=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/exploring-the-dadaist-roots-of-talking-heads-classic-track-i-zimbra\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"Exploring the Dadaist roots of Talking Heads\u2019 classic track, \u2018I Zimbra\u2019\">and indecipherable Dadaist chanting<\/a> formed the basis of where they were heading as a group, and unofficially marked the start of their second chapter as a group.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Further reading: From The Vault<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe knew that our next album would be a further exploration of what we had begun with \u2018I Zimbra\u2019,\u201d Harrison proclaimed, noting that their 1980 album, Remain in Light, couldn\u2019t have existed without them having created the blueprint a year prior on Fear of Music.<\/p>\n<p>Arguably their most challenging song to that point, and a surefire indication that they didn\u2019t care so much about being accessible as they did simply creating boundary-pushing music that borrowed from various genres and sounded like little that had come before it, there\u2019s an incredible argument to be made that \u2018I Zimbra\u2019 is indeed their finest three minutes. It might be completely unintelligible to most listeners, and it might sound alien to others, but by god it\u2019s hard to deny as a masterpiece.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>  <a class=\"fw\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" style=\"\"> ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"28\" height=\"28\" src=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/themes\/far-out-magazine\/img\/google-discover.svg\" alt=\"\"\/> <\/a>   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Sire Records Sat 11 July 2026 8:00, UK Even from their earliest singles, it&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":890213,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3936],"tags":[91533,240914,288600,14662,14663,77,296183,35130,269,2401,35131,16,15],"class_list":["post-1082553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1970s","tag-240914","tag-art-rock","tag-brian-eno","tag-david-byrne","tag-entertainment","tag-fela-kuti","tag-jerry-harrison","tag-music","tag-post-punk","tag-talking-heads","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116901003487196263","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1082553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1082553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/890213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1082553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1082553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1082553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}