The birthday party and mispelled text that led to David Byrne’s most reflective work
For David Byrne, writing a song usually starts one of two ways: groove-oriented ones that begin as a “wordless melody” before becoming a demo, or words heard in passing that inspire fully-fledged stories, like ‘I Met The Buddha at a Downtown Party’.
Most of the songs that Byrne wrote for Who Is the Sky? stemmed from a specific mindset about art creation. Crucially, this was the familiar “don’t give a shit about what people think” type of mindset that Byrne knows well by now, after many years in the game and as one of music’s most well-respected visionaries. Of the two approaches to starting each song, many began with demos and loops, but some started with casual thoughts or conversations that flowered into bigger ideas.
Helping to see this vision to life was producer Kid Harpoon, the ideal partner in crime for Byrne’s oftentimes pinball approach, whose ideas famously centre on entering an organic, often spontaneous flow state. After all, it takes a mastermind to capture Byrne’s unique ideas, and Harpoon was no doubt the ideal person for the job, knowing the importance of spotlighting that absurdity in a way that translated well to the audience.
The pair initially met at a birthday party in Los Angeles, and Byrne sensed that Harpoon had the right kind of energy for something collaborative, after which he sent over some of his latest demos. In true Byrne fashion, he didn’t beat around the bush or mince his words in any way; he simply said:
“These are the kind of songs I write. They are what they are. I would love to work with you.”
Harpoon clearly detected magic there, too, as he was immediately on board, even though there was still much to think about regarding style and direction. However, another missing piece to the puzzle was Ghost Train Orchestra, whom Byrne fell in love with after discovering their Moondog record and seeing them perform in New York. Their contributions gave the record its brass-y tone, the perfect scene-setting for Byrne’s distinctive literal wordplay and absurdism, centralised in the title itself: Who Is the Sky?
Explaining where the attention-grabbing title came from to Jimmy Fallon, Byrne said that the idea emerged when he received a voice-to-text message from a friend who intended to say, “Who is this guy?”, but Byrne’s phone corrected it to, “Who is the sky?” This seemed much more memorable, thought-provoking, and a little playful when said out loud, especially with both variations sounding so much like each other anyway.
Most of the song titles continue this strange balance between stream-of-consciousness and could-be-a-typo wordplay, like the aforementioned ‘I Met The Buddha At A Downtown Party’, which Byrne used as a conduit for exploring searching for spirituality from divine figures, alongside ‘My Apartment Is My Friend’, ‘She Explains Things To Me’, and ‘Everybody Laughs’, which came from Byrne’s incessant use of the word “everybody” in everyday life.
These absurdist threads are used to explore and reflect on many of the same themes Byrne has explored throughout his career, though this time, he becomes more personal on matters that make him a respectable solo artist, like the inner workings of his creative mind, as well as all of the distinctive ways in which he exists in the world around him.
However, instead of letting many of these threads of thought feel weighty in their execution, Byrne ensured that they maintained a more upbeat and playful tone than perhaps some of his more politically-charged work, giving the record a broader sense of positivity – in turn, it feels like this is Byrne in his most natural state, shedding any sense of apprehension in favour of displaying his most honest reflections.
