David Byrne is music’s greatest live show: The proof in three acts
Not long back, the Music Venue Trust revealed that live music attendance was still only at 89% of the pre-pandemic level.
Meanwhile, the emergence of the hashtag #protectyourpeace has received over 150 million views on TikTok. Those two stats are not unrelated.
“The emerging trends show that we have become choosier, slower, and more intentional with the way we engage with culture,” social psychology expert Dr Michael Smith informs me.
“The pandemic didn’t just put things on pause; it made us rethink how we spend our social and emotional energy,” he adds.
Countless studies have also proven that generalised anxiety among the population has proliferated in recent years. So, the battle between a night in on the sofa ‘protecting your peace’ and pleasently scrolling or the energy-sapping thrill of a live experience is fiercely contested in the fevered minds of an anxious generation like never before.
Act I
At the height of this emerging trend, David Byrne unveiled his American Utopia concert. In a bid to cut right through the malaise of our distracted yet guarded minds, Byrne posed the following premise: “What if we could eliminate everything from the stage, except the stuff we care about the most? Without cables or wires, what would be left? Well, it would be us… and you. And that’s what the show is.”
The trailer that announced this back in 2020 then immediately transitioned to Byrne singing the lyric, “Everybody is coming to my house.” The minimalism of the whole thing helped to make the intent clear: Byrne was welcoming the audience into the show, coaxing them away from their sofas, and keeping them engrossed in the upbeat celebration on stage.
Simply put, the message of American Utopia was about unity and coming together, and that’s something that you have to leave the house to fully experience. Beyond the wireless innovation on display – innovation rightfully hailed in its own right – the defining brilliance of American Utopia was that it was the right show at the right time.
The performances were astounding, the songs speak for themselves, every detail was honed and imbued with artfulness to a humbling nth, but underlying all of this was a self-evident vitality. The whole show might have been fun and novel, but those two facets merely informed the deeper point that joy is something we create together rather than passively consume.
Act II
He did the same thing back in 1983 as a member of the Talking Heads. The Cold War had almost institutionalised anxiety and paranoia back then, too. Just a month before the Stop Making Sense concerts, Able Archer 83 – a military test exercise – placed the world on the brink of an inadvertent nuclear war as the Soviets feared the scheduled NATO ‘test’ would be used “as a cover for launching a real attack”.
According to official memos on the Able Archer incident, the US came to believe it was only “a series of ill-timed coincidences” or a few pieces of “faulty intelligence” away from the West being razed to the ground. In response, inadvertently or otherwise, Byrne fittingly razed the traditional live concert to the ground, stepping out onto an empty stage in anti-rock espadrilles with nothing but a boombox and an acoustic guitar in hand.
But from the desolate beginning of the show, counter to the politics of the period, Talking Heads explored the concept of ‘world building’ rather than its nuclear inverse. The democratic construction of Stop Making Sense – gathering one member, instrument, and prop at a time towards a dancing funk bonanza – illuminated that joy is a communal enterprise emboldened by the fusion of multicultural ideas.
At a time of nervous division, the art punks sprang the idea of starting from scratch with reckless abandon and through the simple connective boon of music alone, showing how people really can come together to move as one. It was radical, and it was welcomed. As Dr Swift explains, the breakthrough newness and hope imparted by the show created a sense of cognitive ‘novelty’ and that “is crucial for psychological growth”.
Act III
But Dr Swift also adds that while “novelty” might be vital for growth, familiarity can also “reduce cortisol, our primary stress hormone”. For obvious reasons, the world is pretty stressed right now. So, once again, Byrne offers the right concert at the right time. His latest live show, The ‘Who Is This Sky?’ Tour is a continuation of his two former triumphs, Acts, forgoing any major strides on the novelty front for his fans and instead creating a cosily familiar extension.
Picking up on the wireless advancement of American Utopia, Byrne simply introduces stirring footage to the backdrop for his new show, and beams out simple lines like “Everybody laughs, and everybody cries” in a bid for greater empathy. With Stop Making Sense he showed how fresh ideas can emerge from a simple shake-up, with American Utopia he welcomed his audience in on the act, and now his scope is stretching beyond that with his universal backdrop of the entire planet, the “only heaven we have.”
As he said just a few nights ago at the close of the show in Glasgow, “Despite all the differences, people love being with people.” That seemed pretty clear given the fact that everyone had entered the venue in guarded groups and taken their designated seats, and by the end, those same cynical, tired, and stressed-out people were on their feet, dancing in collective delirium.
The messages are as simple as they are life-affirming, which is perhaps why a witty security guard, a little too pleased with himself, asked our image editor, “So, is this like Bluey for adults?” I’ve never seen the show, but I imagine that’s apt. There is a beautiful parablistic depth to the Who Is This Sky tour that restores a sense of the wide-eyed wonder of youth and its innocent clarity.
Although Byrne is avant-garde and full of complex ideas, he happily sings in self-awareness, “It’s the avant-garde / And it doesn’t mean shit”. Reflecting the urge for art to convey a positive message in the current climate, this latest show clearly does mean “shit”. It’s so full of emotive meaning, in fact, that even a granite statue of a heavyweight boxer would likely well up.
That explains the peak of Byrne as a performer and why he might just be the most cherished live act on the planet. There are polished performers aplenty in the modern age, but very few can erode your cynical defences with pure upbeat energy to the point where a balding solicitor and father of three can look up at a backdrop that suddenly reads, ‘Make America Gay Again’ and burst into tears.
Kurt Vonnegut once said, “I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit.” Time and time again, Byrne does just that. And his latest tour might just be his most timely assertion.
