Bulldog

I'll admit I never really listen to Talking Heads lyrics an awful lot - as much as I love the sound of the songs themselves, David Byrne's lyrics tend to just be random drivel to me. True Stories is probably the only one I tend to make an exception to that rule for though. Seeing as each song's based off tabloid stories of the day, it makes for more interesting reading/listening to the things.

As for the rest of it, you've gotta wonder what the point in it is. The world of visual art is never gonna pander to the over-sensitive, no matter what some right-wing nutjob tries to do about it.

Gavin B.

Allow me to rise in defense of David Byrne. Many of Byrne's lyrics are more about mood rather that meaning. Byrne responded to his critics with his own terse but brilliant statement on the limitations of rigid conventional thinking, "Stop making sense."

Patti Smith, Beck, Syd Barrett, & most notably Bob Dylan (during his Bringing It All Back Home/Highway 61/Blonde on Blonde period) were all influenced by the Dada & Surrealist artists like Marcel Duchamp & Andres Breton along with the French Symbolist writers like Stephan Mallarme, Charles Baudelaire, & Arthur Rimbaud. Byrne is one of many outstanding musicians who have adopted the surrealist form of artistic expression.

And Byrne isn't the first artist to receive critical backlash for his use of surrealism. When Bob Dylan moved away from topical songs in 1965 and toward surrealist & symbolist influences, many of his fans, music critics, and musical peers criticized Dylan's stream of consciousness lyrics as self indulgent nonsense. Yet many of lyrics of songs like It's All Over Now Baby Blue, Mr. Tambourine Man, Ballad of A Thin Man, Desolation Row, & Visions of Johanna are regarded as his most enduring & literate songs.

It was rock music played a big role in raising the public's awareness of all but dead surrealist movement, during the Sixties & the Seventies. By 1967, even the Beatles were wearing their surrealist influences on their sleeve with songs like Strawberry Fields, Hello Goodbye & I Am the Walrus. My interest is surrealism began with my own curiosity about the title of the 1967 Jefferson Airplane album Surrealistic Pillow. That single innocuous album title opened the doors of perception for me.

David Byrne's unique role was to bring more of psychosocial element to the table. Byrne & his primary musical mentor, Brian Eno are both devotees to the ideas of psychoanalyst Karl Jung. Jung believed that the subconscious mind was every bit as important to human development as the fully awakened, self aware and analytical conscious mind.

From the Jung perspective, the great division between the non-logical dream life of the subconscious mind & the logical, fully awakened conscious mind is a false dichotomy. In that context David Byrne's use of literary devices like juxtaposed imagery, dystopian ideas, disjointed framing, dramatic irony & extended allegories are all within the stylistic range of the great surrealist writers & composers. Surrealist painters like Salvadore Dali, Max Ernst, & Rene Magritte expressed similar ideas on canvass.

David Byrne does deserve criticism for his post Talking Heads career. Since the breakup of the band, Byrne has become a bit of a obscurantist who is all over the grid in his pursuit of the esoteric. He hasn't made a single great album during his solo career. Instead Byrne become a tourist in the enchanted land of artistic pretentiousness. All told, David Byrne had about 15 brilliant years before falling into artistic irrelevance which is about 10 years longer the productive lifespan of even the most creative musicians.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Bulldog

Don't get me wrong, it's not like I'm vehemently against symbolism in any of its forms. After all, David Bowie's another one who uses a lot of it in his lyrics and it never bothers me at all. Surrealism in any form (be it in lyrics, poetry or avante-garde film) is something I can definitely enjoy, but it's a mood that I really have to work myself towards if you know what I mean. Plus, I never really pay an awful lot of attention to lyrics in any case.

Gotta disagree slightly with you over David Byrne's solo career as well. Look Into the Eyeball's a decent album, and I'm a huge fan of Rei Momo, but otherwise I agree - his solo output tends to be hampered by over-ambition, even if I still think there's the odd good song dotted throughout the rest of his albums.