Talking Heads

once in a lifetime gets way more radio play

It's true that I've heard fans younger than me cite "This Must Be The Place" as their favorite Heads love song or The Best Love Song Ever. The correct answer is "Creatures of Love." Or "I'm Not in Love."

well that new yorker article is describing a subset of people. williamsburg and silver lake are not representative of most of america.

it sorta makes sense that it'd get hipster love, sorta a forefather to 'all my friends'

Byrne was the funkiest white man in pop until Flea showed up.

ok waht

I've always thought it was their best song fwiw

i was skeptical, but on Spotify, four of the top 10 most popular TH tracks are "This Must Be The Place" on various different albums -- the highest at #2 is from the Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps soundtrack

"This Must Be The Place" has been by far one of my favorite Heads songs since the first time i saw Stop Making Sense, though, so i don't really have a problem w/ that

four of the top 11, i should say

it's hard to isolate those numbers from its use in a big hollywood movie, like it's a good song but I'm sure if oliver stone used 'road to nowhere' I'm sure that'd be on top

thank you, New Yorker, for helping me imagine Anthony Kiedis singing "This Must Be The Place."

People who don't know who about Talking Heads, they know that song.

"Road to Nowhere" used prominently in Reality Bites and is even more of the moment in these fraught times than TMBTP but alas.

who

I've heard TMBTP at every wedding I've ever been to

it's my favourite talking heads song. has been since i saw stop making sense as a child (my parents borrowed the vhs from a friend sometime in the early to mid 90s). i definitely hear burning down the house a lot more tho. maybe cause im frequently exposed to oldies radio and that was their biggest hit.

yeah reminds me of the songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller thread which turned out to be mainly songs that had been used in movies

I like the song -- the way the band eases into the first verse after they fool around with the possibilities of their instruments, the casual eloquence of the lyrics -- but it's never been a top ten Heads track. Really its recent popularity has made me relisten, which isn't a bad thing.

When was the last time you heard “Burning Down The House,” the band’s biggest single? Probably very recently.

I've heard TMBTP at every wedding I've ever been to

― BC Forgbs (Ówen P.), Thursday, June 14, 2012 11:06 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

i couldn't remember if i put it on the playlist at my wedding but i just checked -- yep, third song during the cocktail hour

last.fm stats, last six months:

1. psycho killer
2. once in a lifetime
3. burning down the house
(big drop)
4. road to nowhere
5. this must be the place

so not really consistent with nyer's claim. (also, have never heard this at a wedding)

goddamn do I love "burning down the house"

for most of the nineties "And She Was," "Stay Up Late," and "Wild Wild Life" got massive airplay on my local AOR station.

the fact that "Place" is above much bigger radio staples like "And She Was" and "Life During Wartime" and "Take Me To The River" on last.fm still says something, though.

i don't have iTunes on this computer, anyone care to look up its rank there?

from the "songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller" thread:

Talking Heads. Their biggest charting US single is Wild Wild Life. Biggest in UK is Road To Nowhere. Their signature/legacy song is clearly Once In A Lifetime, which never even charted.

― kornrulez6969, Friday, March 27, 2009 12:55 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Once in a Lifetime" the biggest iTunes hit

Their biggest charting US single is Wild Wild Life

"Burning Down the House" hit the top ten while WWL barely crawled into the top thirty.

the other iTunes finalists:

Burning Down the house
And She Was
Psycho Killer
Take Me to the River

iTunes ranking:

1. Once in a Lifetime
2. Burning Down the House
3. And She Was
4. Psycho Killer
5. Take Me To The River
6. This Must Be The Place

My contention that Talking Heads "live on" through "Once In a Lifetime," "Burning Down the House," and "Psycho Killer" at least as much as through This Must Be the Place is LOOKING GOOD

oops xp

oh yeah the NYer definitely overstated their case (esp at the cost of pretending "Burning Down The House" doesn't still get played anywhere) but the general gist is true

what's interesting to me is that "Place" was a single in the '80s not once but twice -- first as the follow-up to "Burning" and then off Stop Making Sense, and both times it failed to gain the kind of following it enjoys now.

the general gist is true

you mean about david byrne being a funky white man?

At this moment I'm dreaming that I live in the world where Living Colour's cover of "Memories Can't Wait" elevated that song to the level of cultural import that Arcade Fire did for TMBTP

'hipsters really like this song' seems like a reasonable statement to me

it's funny to go from listening to this TH song back to listening to stuff for my Bee Gees poll ballot, while reading in that article how David Byrne was "a one-man rebuke to the Gibb brothers"

yeah, i guess the piece waffles about whether it's talking about the song's standing among "young people" or "everyone who's not hardcore into postpunk like Jonathan Lethem" or "the American songbook" or whether it just means "hipsters in Williamsburg know it even though they don't know who Talking Heads are."

for most of the nineties "And She Was," "Stay Up Late," and "Wild Wild Life" got massive airplay on my local AOR station.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Thursday, June 14, 2012 11:14 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

and she was + wwl still get the most radio airplay around here

everyone i've ever met knows "burning down the house" and "once in a lifetime" at least as well as they know "naive melody", if they know any of it at all, but i guess i am going to the wrong bars. also what's with the new yorker's scare quotes around "love song".

This is all very improbable. “This Must Be The Place” is a love song only in spite of itself (it dispenses about as much hope as Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”)

what on earth

TMBTP became ubiquitous at hipster parties i went to between 2004-2006.

Road to Nowhere though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7FKVAuDv8M

i can vouch that in Manchester it seemed like TMBTP was permanently on in every bar for a good few years c. the mid-late 00's.
also there's a v popular club here called.. http://www.naivemelody.co.uk/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTiFNQBRwwU

i'm glad i've never heard any of these covers of the song and i hope i never will. what i like about it feels very tied to the TH arrangement and not adaptable to just any voice or set of instrumentation.

So weird. I had no idea TMBTP was a popular TH song. I don't think I've ever heard it other than when I play it myself. I would have thought Once in a Lifetime, Burning Down, And She Was and WWL were way more popular.

i have a vague memory of hearing it in the trailer of some 80s or 90s movie, possibly at the beginning of a VHS rental, years and years ago, but i can't figure out what movie and it wasn't mentioned in that article or anywhere else.

also features prominently in your mainstream rom-coms a lot these days too; a quick rummage on IMDB reveals it's in both Crazy Stupid Love and He's Just Not Tht Into You.

then there's this of course

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zppYSFPKrQ8

"This Must Be The Place" is the sentimental favorite, maybe, like "Solisbury Hill." But I don't know anyone who would call "Solisbury Hill" their favorite Peter Gabriel song.

Of course, "This Must Be The Place" is such a lovely track, totally wistful and simple. There are very few Talking Heads songs in its mode.

FWIW, on the radio I hear "And She Was" more than any other Talking Head song, save perhaps "Burning Down the House" and the Al Green cover. Sometimes "Psycho Killer," sometimes "Once in a Lifetime."

I wish "Road to Nowhere" and "(Nothing But) Flowers" got more airplay, as far as late-era Heads goes.

But I don't know anyone who would call "Solisbury Hill" their favorite Peter Gabriel song.

i might, actually

Solisbury Hill is a good analogy.

"In Your Eyes" probably fits better tbh -- on a big album but initially a major hit, slowly became a pop culture touchstone through covers and movie placements etc.

xxxxp Billy Corgan in that Smashing Pumpkins "Once in a Lifetime" looks like the guy in Robocop who drives into a vat of toxic waste and then stumbles out of his car and his face melts off, but just at the very second his face starts melting off

also v bad version of the song of course

I thought it was like Chris Elliot doing his impersonation of Marlon Brando, cribbing Byrne for the climax of Apocalypse Now

Dobly Atmos Spatial Audio!

https://x.com/highdefdiscnews/status/1753951689936126111?s=46&t=bJOqpCuQneT7ju08y55VSA

Hot off the presses.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A73voVPhMfY-

that's...fine, though musically a note-for-note recreation

I've seen that one coming up a lot on "social" over the past few days (I guess just cuz Paramore are particularly popular)

The remastered Stop Making Sense is now streaming on Max, and holy fuck it just looks and sounds incredible.

I hadn't been interested to click that Paramore cover until now - nearly note for note as you say akm, but Hayley sings the absolute fuck out of it, made it twice as fun for me!

I really like the Paramore cover! It's not EXACTLY a note-for-note recreation, but it's certainly built on a chassis of showing they CAN do a note-for-note recreation.

Dang, I wish I still had HBO. Hopefully they'll still have it when I eventually rotate back.

I don't wanna be that guy but the Stop Making Sense remaster is something I actually dragged my ass to a movie theater to see and I think it deserves and needs that

i don't wanna be that girl but i wish they'd done the bonus tracks as well :)

i drove 180 miles each way to the last theater in the state playing it to watch it, so now i have taken the "that guy" pressure off you eephus. maybe.