David Byrne on the band that “changed our idea of popular music”
Every rock band worth its salt knows the importance of evolving to stay relevant. While some rest on their laurels, basking in the safety of a tried-and-true formula, the more daring among them constantly push the boundaries, dismantling their own sound to create something fresh. David Byrne, known for his own artistic reinventions with Talking Heads, acknowledges the seismic impact of Radiohead, whose musical evolution reshaped the entire landscape of contemporary music.
While Talking Heads formed in the wake of the punk movement, Byrne was always looking to make something a bit more sophisticated than what was typically blaring out of CBGBs. For all of the post-punk weirdness available on Talking Heads: 77, the most exciting parts of the band came when they were working with producers like Brian Eno and Robert Fripp on albums like Fear of Music and Remain in Light.
Although they managed to pull off a miracle by getting songs like ‘Burning Down the House’ onto MTV, they would not survive the 1980s intact. Since Byrne wanted to take charge of the group and didn’t seem to care what his bandmates thought about it, their final albums, like Naked, were strange detours that sounded like the group had run out of gas.
On one of these weird art-rock projects, Thom Yorke was paying attention to the song ‘Radio Head’ when putting his first band together. Using the name of the song instead of their atrocious starter name, On a Friday, Radiohead were born playing the kind of grunge that was all the rage back in 1993.
Finding out quickly that spending a career trying to be a British Kurt Cobain was not going to work, Yorke and the rest of the outfit began experimenting on The Bends and never looked back, continuing to push themselves on every project. Although Byrne could appreciate what the band were doing on albums like OK Computer, he remembered being fascinated by what they could do when hearing Kid A for the first time.
After throwing out the rules of rock and making a glitchy electronic record, Radiohead went beyond the genre frameworks altogether for their next projects, from delivering In Rainbows over the Internet to making vast soundscapes on tracks from A Moon Shaped Pool. While they have been virtually, ahem, radio-silent since their 2016 record, Byrne admitted that their music has had a profound impact on the industry.
When inducting the band into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Byrne said that the works of Radiohead have drastically changed what music is supposed to be, saying, “Their last record, A Moon Shaped Pool, sounded very cinematic. It sounded like a movie in your head, in my head, anyway. They changed our idea of what popular music can be, how it can be released, and how it can be marketed to us.”
Even though Byrne has continued to innovate throughout his solo career, like on the soundtrack to Everything Everywhere All At Once, Radiohead may have managed to surpass him in a few areas, from Yorke and Jonny Greenwood’s work with The Smile to their refusal to be predictable to their fans. Radiohead may have begun life following in the footsteps of Talking Heads, but by following their own artistic inclinations, they have managed to remain true to their artistry while staying as culturally relevant as ever.
