The Cover Uncovered: David Byrne’s fiesta of life on ‘Who is the Sky?’
The mantra David Byrne has always kept throughout his life and work is to expect the unexpected.
This has obviously manifested itself in some intriguing, beguiling, and sometimes downright bizarre creative pursuits over the years, whether during his tenure as frontman of the Talking Heads or within his own solo capacity. Either way, Byrne’s visions have always been weird and wonderful – the Willy Wonka, if you like, of his own kaleidoscopic world of imagination.
Even in all his 73 years, this is something that has never dulled from the sparkle of the singer’s allure. He is the mad inventor behind some of rock’s most beloved songs, which is an asset he devotes extreme amounts of pride and passion to. Indeed, it seems as he gets older that the more the illusion continues to twist, which is never more evident than in his most recent record, Who is the Sky?.
Never the wallflower and ever the maximalist, Byrne’s cover for the album is indeed a kaleidoscope of colour, but it also evokes a sense of all-encompassing universality that he has always sought to include within his work. Much like the never-ending sky, the enormous wheel of rainbow represents something far greater about the sum of the human condition.
Although Byrne finds himself at the epicentre of that particular universe, the process of bringing the concept of Who Is The Sky? to life was one where he relied on the help of some of his former acquaintances to use all their artistic powers for the greater good. This is where the graphic designer Shira Inbar came into the fray.
Inbar was no stranger to Byrne’s mind and creative direction – she previously served as an animator for his online magazine, Reasons to be Cheerful, in 2021. At that time, she was responsible for bringing the singer’s delicate doodles to effervescent life through the publication, later taking control of its design and also creating graphics for a live show, but she never expected that this partnership would extend beyond the confines of the magazine.
Except, early this year, Byrne contacted her again out of the blue with the news that he was working on a new solo album. He wanted her input to create the cover. Naturally, Inbar jumped at the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It might have been an anxiety-inducing task to some, but with Byrne as the mastermind behind it all, the ideas were always going to be flowing.
“David showed me this gallery of images he’d collected,” Inbar subsequently told Creative Review. “Traditional costumes, masks and ceremonial outfits from Mexico, Nigeria and other countries.” That does a lot of explaining when it comes to the festival of brightness and the array of designs on display. This is no haphazard chaos, but an ode to the cultures that make life so brimming with excitement.
This social view of life was something that Byrne himself came to reflect on when discussing the album’s lead single, ‘Everybody Laughs’. “Someone I know said, ‘David, you use the word everybody’ a lot’. I suppose I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it,” he explained. “Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps and stares at the ceiling.”
But the mere influence of New York does not go far enough in describing just what a smorgasbord the cover to Who is the Sky? encompasses. Whether it’s Mexico, Nigeria, or the streets of Manhattan, Byrne’s approach to the world is evidently one filled with a celebration of colour, vitality, and permanence.
In some ways, him standing at the centre of that ever-expanding orbit is the ultimate symbol of the right message: the world may be confusing, zany, or even just a little too much at certain times. But at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that we all live under the one sky.
