David Byrne picks his favourite instrumental songs
Talking Heads, the New York new wave group led by David Byrne, was nothing short of a creative and commercial phenomenon throughout its 15 years of service. As former art school students, David Byrne, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz envisioned a colourful future for themselves but hadn’t considered musical careers until the mid-1970s, when punk began its meteoric rise.
“Now I’m in New York, in a band with Chris Frantz and his girlfriend, Tina [Weymouth], and we didn’t have a super-duper plan,” Byrne revealed in a 2018 interview with Pitchfork. “I had ambitions to be a fine artist and show in galleries, but I was also writing songs. This club, CBGB, had opened around the corner, and there were bands like Television playing, and Patti Smith was doing poetry readings. We thought, ‘If we learn some songs, we can play there.'”
From these humble origins, Talking Heads became a behemoth of deeply artistic, instrumentally innovative music. Their 1977 debut album was palpably associated with the contemporary punk wave, but already, Byrne’s eccentric lyrical whim was showing verdant shoots.
Crucially, this debut album reached the ears of the former Roxy Music synth player Brian Eno, who befriended Talking Heads in 1979. In a 2022 interview with Far Out, Weymouth remembered how Eno’s involvement kept the band from an early breakup. “What happened is David was off again; in 1979, he’d left the band – he’s the kinda guy who wandered off a little bit,” Weymouth said. “So Brian Eno was living in town, and Chris and I started just jamming in our loft.”
“So we said, ‘Oh, Brian, wouldn’t you like to come and jam with us? We’re going to have some fun; we’re just going to approach it like we’re kids with toys that we’ve never experienced before. We’re all going to play each other’s instruments.’ So Brian said, ‘Yeah, sounds good,'” she continued.
“So then we call up Jerry, and we say, ‘Hey, guess what, Brian Eno’s coming; you wanna jam with us? And Jerry said, ‘Yes, OK!’ And so he came, and then we called David. ‘Guess what, David, Jerry and Brian Eno are coming to jam with us, and we’re gonna write some songs.’ And that brought David running.”
With Eno on board as a creative collaborator and producer, Talking Heads entered their most critically lauded spree. The band recorded three albums with Eno, each better than the last. The music began to channel Eno and Byrne’s fascination with cutting-edge production techniques and the music of Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti.
Following Remain In Light, Eno and Byrne released their experimental album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts. The release celebrated the pair’s shared taste in avant-garde production and world music. Unlike the prior Talking Heads releases, the album was devoid of Byrne’s vocals, instead celebrating instrumentals with just a few discerning vocal samples, some sung and others spoken.
In February 2024, Byrne added a playlist to his David Byrne Radio series entitled Who Needs Words? The musician lays out his premise, “A playlist of beautiful instrumental music. Ranging from pedal steel virtuosos, whistlers, Ethiopian bands based in DC to the sleeping beauty Branko Mataja.” For the most part, the list is instrumental, but in places, the Talking Heads frontman bends the rules, including several songs with vocals. In such areas, he averts the listener to the beauty of the instrumental parts as opposed to the lyrics.
See the full list below. If you like what you see, you can follow our Spotify playlist.
David Byrne’s favourite instrumental songs:
- ‘Addis Black Widow’ – Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics
- ‘Early Bird’ – Kate NV
- ‘Nothing Was Delivered’ – Buddy Emmons
- ‘Harry’s Theme (Lite Pullman)’ – Vulfmon & Harrison Whitford
- ‘Esketa Dance’ – Mulatu Astatke & The Heliocentrics
- ‘Tesko Mi Je Zaboravit Tebe’ – Branko Mataja
- ‘Lost My Mind’ – Will Van Horn
- ‘Brock Graveside’ – J.G. Thirlwell
- ‘Luz de Luna’ – Son Rompe Pera
- ‘Coral’ – Dawn Richard & Spencer Zahn
- ‘Egoland’ – Rodrigo y Gabriela
- ‘No Reason’ – The Chemical Brothers
- ‘Shahbaz Qalandar’ – Ustad Noor Bakhsh
- ‘Caribea’ – Ghost Train Orchestra & Kronos Quartet
- ‘Lounge Lizard’ – Molly Lewis
- ‘Singing Strings of Steel’ – Buddy Emmons
- ‘Sunrise (in California)’ [feat. Carlos Niño] ‘ Thandi Ntuli
- ‘Hoarse Whisperer’ – Nick Shoulders
- ‘A Love International’ – Khruangbin
- ‘Cija Li Je Livada’ – Branko Mataja
- ‘Hanuman’ – Rodrigo y Gabriela
- ‘Pluto’s Lament’ – The Olympians
- ‘Fo Sho’ – Delvon Lamarr Organ Trio
- ‘Elephant’ – Tame Impala
- ‘Node Wrestling’ – J.G. Thirlwell
- ‘Confessions at the Dinner Table’ (feat. Quinn Oulton) – Kate NV
- ‘Kalandar’ – Shye Ben-Tzur, Jonny Greenwood & The Rajasthan Express
- ‘Arkansaw Troubler’ – Nick Shoulders
