Ten Favorite Rock Songwriters: David Byrne (#5)

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Welcome to the countdown of my favorite songwriters in three categories -- country, rock, and songwriting teams. I think today's entries could be labeled "no surprise Friday." Here's the next person on the list of favorite rock songwriters. #5: David Byrne Yeah, I know. The songwriting team is an obvious choice, too. The front man of Talking Heads has a brilliant knack for looking at a photograph then writing songs that, instead of talking about the subject of the photo, details all of the things in the background. (Comedian Rich Hall did an impersonation of Byrne once on a Saturday morning kids' show [no kidding] where he sang a song about the pencil, a button, the table top, and other things.) Superficially that sounds boring, but the music he put behind those lyrics is another glorious aspect of his brilliance. Yeah, reciting a list of cities in "Cities" might not be a topic that will make you run for the song, but those sarcastic little snips at towns ("Down El Paso way things get a little spread out, people got no idea where in the world they are") while looking for "a city to live in" with a great music track is part of what made Talking Heads stand, pardon the pun, heads and shoulders above other bands from the punk/new wave era. And Talking Heads' style changed with -- really, ahead of -- the musical times. "Psycho Killer" might be punk, but there was the R&B of "Take Me to the River," the African rhythms of most of the Fear of Music album (years before people praised Paul Simon's Graceland), the dance of Speaking in Tongues, and the painting of the American music landscape on True Stories and Little Creatures. Byrne didn't confine his greatness to Talking Heads. After the band broke up he released several solo albums and provided soundtrack music (which actually goes back to his music for a ballet, The Catherine Wheel). He won an Oscar for the soundtrack to The Last Emperor, which sounds nothing like Talking Heads (don't expect "Burning Down the Great Wall" in that film!). In 2008 he reunited with Brian Eno, who produced a couple of Talking Heads albums (and did a "side project" with Byrne, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, in 1981), for the terrific Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. Although the split with Talking Heads was messy (Tina Weymouth said her lawyer called the break-up a "divorce," thanks to Byrne's lawsuits) and Byrne announced last year he saw no reason for a Talking Heads reunion, there was a "happy ending" (as Chris Frantz put it) when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002. Talking Heads made some of the greatest music of the late 70s and 80s, and you can thank David Byrne quite a bit for creating those tunes. David Byrne Born David Byrne May 13, 1952, Edinburgh, Scotland Rock and Roll Hall of Fame - 2002 (with Talking Heads) Academy Award - 1988 (The Last Emperor) Best-known songs: "Burning Down the House;" "Wild Wild Life;" "Psycho Killer;" "Life During Wartime;" "Once in a Lifetime." Here's a song from Speaking in Tongues that's one of the highlights of the Stop Making Sense film: