Credit: Far Out / Sire Records

Why are Talking Heads clubbed in with punk?

Wed 23 April 2025 0:00, UK

Were the pioneering 1970s quartet Talking Heads punk or new wave? Or any act from CBGB’s heyday, for that matter? Everybody knows what punk is, even if they can’t readily articulate it. Well-trodden tales of punk upending the music world—and in the UK’s case a keen “fuck you” to the fusty class system—killing prog overnight and giving classic rock a proper shoeing are all wrapped around punk’s lore, but the attitude, the sonic ephemerality, and a loathing for the hippy idyll’s sad whimper of an end seize the senses when you’re faced with it. If done right, of course.

New wave ostensibly has a clearer definition, denoting the music entering the charts shaped by punk. It’s a woollier term when scrutinised, however. “New wave” is often an adjective to describe any band using keyboards or sporting skinny ties. This has merit, plenty of bands in 1978-1982 embraced synthesisers and avoided double-denim fashion cliches like the plague, presenting an unmistakable ‘look’ of the era, probably looking like The Cars in most American minds.

New wave was hated by many in punk, viewed as a corporate hijacking of the countercultural ‘year zero’ and repackaged with non-threatening pop groups dutifully sporting new wave attire and pushed by the big labels. So anxious about this dystopian future, Jello Biafra opened the Dead Kennedys’ ‘Bleed For Me’ at Los Angeles’ Santa Monica Civic Auditorium show in 1980 with a cautionary forewarning of what awaited the punk movement should the Californian legislators have their way.

Despite such ambiguity to new wave, it’s also a perfect term. Punk quite literally sparked a ‘new wave’ who creatively and politically sought to destroy a rock pedestal that had long been unmoored from what made the art form exciting in the first place, and tear asunder the class barriers that had gatekept the paths to rock following the ashes of the Woodstock generation. Overseeing popular music’s great reset, punk and new wave still bristle with fierce identity even on the cusp of the 50th anniversary.

So why are Talking Heads grouped with punk?

‘Cos that’s what they were! Punk wasn’t just “learn three chords” and it certainly wasn’t tartan slacks and mohawks, punk was the liberating white flash of affording artists to be their weird selves, Talking Heads no exception. Opening for Ramones at their very first gig in 1975, Talking Heads were every bit as insurrectionary as the rest of the new wave, brimming with iconoclastic bite while still wearing their love of funk, Afrobeat, and the artier end of glam on their sleeves.

Even their creative trajectory can read like a map of punk and new wave’s general winding journey. Starting with their idiosyncratic garage on Talking Heads: 77, Fear of Music‘s post-punk chill, New York’s mutant disco finding a kindred spirit in the mainstream charts with Speaking in Tongues, and unwittingly becoming MTV stars off the back of Little Creatures.

Questioning Talking Heads’ punk stripes means electronic provocateurs Suicide must similarly be scrutinised as to their place in punk lore, Blondie’s bubblegum power pop, or Television’s progressive complexities, all essential ingredients in CBGB’s punk melting pot. Talking Heads are clubbed in with punk because they realise more than most punk’s ‘DIY’ ethos succinctly, both practically and creatively.