Tina Weymouth reveals the one Talking Heads song she hates
Talking Heads served as a crucial bridge, delivering rock music from the punk era of the mid-1970s to the eclectic new-wave stylings of the 1980s. After releasing their emphatic debut album in 1977, the ‘Psycho Killer’ masterminds had drawn attention from Roxy Music alumnus and producer Brian Eno.
With Eno on board, the New York-based group entered their most prolific and pivotal period between 1978 and 1980, releasing three seminal albums: More Music About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music and Remain In Light. Most fans will agree that Talking Heads mastered their niche in the final of the Eno trilogy, which brought a wholly original sound influenced primarily by punk and Fela Kuti’s Afrobeat music.
In a recent interview with Far Out Magazine, Talking Heads’ bassist Tina Weymouth discussed the band’s impressive back-catalogue, picking out 1979’s Fear of Music and its 1980 follow-up album, Remain In Light, as her favourite moments. “I would say my favourite albums were Remain In Light and, even before that, Fear of Music. I really loved that one. That was our most ‘rock’ record, and I really enjoy it. I really enjoyed playing Fear of Music live; it was really nice and thriving. It had a lot of meat to it.”
Later in the conversation, Weymouth revealed that she enjoyed all of the band’s music apart from one song. “The only one that I really don’t like is ‘The Big Country’ [from 1978’s More Songs About Buildings and Food]. I deliberately wanted to create something really dumb [laughs]. Because I think, oftentimes, confronted with David’s [Byrne] lyrics, we would interject into the song through the arrangement of the instruments. And so sometimes we would just do something that was completely contrary to whatever he was singing about.”
“Sometimes we would make it very happy if it was a very sad thing, you know, and mostly, people took it as being ironic, but in ‘The Big Country,’ I thought, ‘Oh my gosh!’ So you had to pick one’s battles. We couldn’t say ‘Noo!’ to things that might turn out well, so who was I to say no to ‘The Big Country’?” she said sardonically, commenting: “It was very contemptuous of people.”
In ‘The Big Country’, Byrne sings: “I wouldn’t live there if you paid me/I wouldn’t live like that, no siree/I wouldn’t do the things the way those people do/I wouldn’t live there if you paid me to”, in a seemingly contemptible appraisal of life in the USA’s rural midwest. In a 2015 interview with Marc Maron, however, Byrne claimed that the song was written to satirise popular culture’s image of him as a “snotty city kid”. In reality, he claimed to have the deepest respect for the quieter areas of the US, which is somewhat verified by his subliminal warning in 1988’s ‘(Nothing But) Flowers.’
Have a listen to ‘The Big Country’ and ‘(Nothing But) Flowers’ below and see what you think.
