David Byrne and Maggie Rogers duet on ‘Strange Overtones’ live in New York
During a recent show in New York, David Byrne and Maggie Rogers delivered a stunning duet on the song ‘Strange Overtones’. The pair came together at Radio City Music Hall, where Byrne treated fans to a selection of tracks from across his discography. ‘Strange Overtones’ is plucked from the former Talking Heads frontman’s 2008 album with Brian Eno, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.
This isn’t the first time Rogers and Byrne have collaborated. Last year, the American singer-songwriter featured David in the video for her Surrender single ‘That’s Where I Am’. Revealing that Byrne got in touch with her out of the blue, Rogers told NME. “I cold emailed him. We’d never met. I’m a massive fan.”
“‘Strange Overtones’ was a song in the pandemic that I just deeply connected to and played over and over and over again,” she added. “So he feels a part of this record in my brain because I was so connected to that song: ‘[He] was just like, ‘Yeah, I’m getting my haircut downtown tomorrow. Where? What time?’… He was like, ‘Yeah, great. I’ll ride my bike over. I think I can hang for like 20 minutes’.”
At the start of February, David Bryne released a special Valentine’s Day edition of his monthly playlist. The musician featured tracks by the likes of The 1975, SZA, Rosalia, Billie Eilish and FINNEAS. “This playlist consists mostly of recent songs I’ve added to my playlists,” Byrne wrote [Via BrooklynVegan] “Some of these artists and songs were mentioned to me by friends, newspapers, and algorithms. They are not all love songs, but many of them are very popular!”
During a Far Out interview with Byrne’s former bandmate Tina Weymouth, the Tom Tom Club founder claimed that a lot of “people didn’t even want David in their band,” when Talking Heads came together. “You know… he’s a very weird guy,” Weymouth went on. “And a lot of people just didn’t think he was rock star material.”
“Chris put the first band together [Artistics], and he put Talking Heads together,” she continued. “He put the deposit down on the loft and invited David to come live there and invited me to come live there, you know, ‘Let’s form a band.’ But other people were just very… they didn’t tell us about any of their fallouts. Nobody told us about David Byrne and their personal experiences with David Byrne.”
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