David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrneis a Scottish-born American musician who was the founding member, principal songwriter, and lead singer and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads, active between 1975 and 1991...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionRock Singer
Date of Birth14 May 1952
CityDumbarton, Scotland
fun fighting cartoon
My opinion is that somebody certainly has the right to do cartoons that make fun of somebody else's religion. But to reprint them just to provoke a fight and just to provoke it like thumbing your nose at someone else and going, "What are you gonna do about it?
phones play ipods
I'm really curious how the private listening - iPods, people listening on their phones - how that might eventual effect music. There'll be a whole genre of music that really works on a kind of one to one headphone or earbud level but doesn't really work when you play it in a room.
people house ambitious
People are renovating places and opening ambitious new venues. That's one thing that music does. It gets people out of their houses, and gets them hanging out together.
art doe looks
Music is relegated to an underground, relatively obscure group of listeners. It's partly because of the nature of the medium. With a piece of visual art, you can look at something ugly, brutal and in your face, but it's kind of - there it is. It doesn't take you over in the same way that putting on the music at a certain volume does.
perfect temptation might
There's a great temptation to clean everything up and make everything more perfect. You have to know when to stop and stop doing it, or you might end up with something that sounds metronomic.
song beats chords
I still feel like if I can get a song to work with, say, a basic beat, a rhythm, some chord changes, and a melody, a vocal melody - if it works with that, then I feel it's written and there's something there.
simplicity skeptical
Always be skeptical about simplicity.
feelings denial incredibles
My personal feeling is that human beings have this incredible capacity for denial.
thinking vision achieve
I don't think I have grand visions that I will never achieve.
missing information digital
What's been missing from digital music sales has been the possibility of added depth. In a printed package one can only include so many images and so much text - for example - but digitally it's wide open. For the most part at the moment we get less information for slightly less money - though we could be getting a lot more.
song character writing
I think it's really hard to make songs that pursue an agenda. You can kind of do it a little bit through a character, so the character gives voice to something or their story, the story of the character tells you something, but, for me anyway, it's really hard to write directly about politics.
song thinking two
I think that if they want people to listen to ten or twelve songs, they have to give the listener a reason to listen to ten or twelve songs or to buy ten or twelve and listen to the whole thing instead of just pulling one or two for their iPod or their computer.
falling-in-love love-you missing
When you fall in love, you feel like a missing piece of a puzzle that's been found.
guitar names envious
Personally, being somewhat envious of Richard's (Thompson) songwriting and guitar playing, it's somewhat satisfying he's not yet achieved household-name status. It serves him right for being so good.