S6 EP5: David Byrne on clashes in Talking Heads, neurodivergence, and culture wars

31:17Like the sense of you being removed from the world somewhat. I've heard other people say that. I think Greta, the activist. Yeah, the activist says, this is my superpower. And it is a kind of ability to be able to intensely focus on something like your writing or the music you're making or whatever it might be. But also that you're curious about the how of things almost as much as the why that people get caught up on. What was the psychology behind it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I've been referred to as an anthropologist from Mars. Right, which is the Oliver Sacks phrase. Yes. You could get a collection of case studies on Mars, in fact, although from Mars.

32:05Same. You're on the wrong planet. So, yes, I realize it's an ongoing thing with me, writing songs that ask questions. Why do we do that? Why do I do that? Why do people act like that? What's going on there? How can I understand that? It's kind of trying to make sense of the world, the world of people and everything else. And you can kind of express that curiosity and questioning in songs. On the new album, there's a song which jumped out called She Explains Things to Me. I'm going to be super literal. You've noticed I have a habit of taking lyrics literally already. That one's easy to take literally.

32:52She explains what is happening to me in the movies we watch. I say, why did they do that? Why did they stop? Why did they do that on that TV show? And I ask myself, wow, how does she know? I went into the melody. It's like you have an interpreter. And actually, I could relate to that. Like I've noticed in my relationships, I come out of a movie and my other half has always noticed more. She understands the motivations. I know because he was in love with her. that was why he left. I'm like, but that doesn't make any sense. Yes. Is that what we're talking about? Yes. It does seem to be fairly common.

33:32I mean, I played it for people and I go, and a woman would go, oh, yes, my husband or my partner does exactly the same thing. Do you think if you are neurodivergent or if there is any little bit of that, having spoken about the ways in which that can be advantageous or that, you know, it forces you to maybe navigate things in a different way that you break things down and figure out processes, or you become curious about different things that then feels fresh and gives you an insight that people can connect with. But I could imagine at times it might be make things difficult as well, especially if you struggle at times to read emotions or if there's parts of life that feel less intelligible.

34:21I mean, do you think in any ways it's been a challenge for you? Oh, occasionally, yes, which is also addressed in that song where I've had the experience where someone will say, well, I clearly said no, and then I'll kind of replay the conversation and the word no was not there. But they expected their expressions or their facial expression or the nuances of what they were saying to be read and clearly interpreted as a no. This is not me trying to do something inappropriate. Thank you for the clarification, by the way. I wasn't able to read that. That said, I'm a lot better at that now than I was in the past.

35:14And I'm a lot more comfortable with people now than I was in the past. So it changes. I'll give music credit for that too. Making music, working with other people on music, playing together with musicians on stage, that becomes this very ecstatic, transcendent kind of social thing. I thought, okay, that's over the years that time passes and you kind of change after a bit.

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37:17Dialing back for a second. So, correct me if I'm wrong, the second song you ever wrote was Psycho Killer. Could that be right? That could be right, yes. It was a very early one, in other words. It was very early. It was sort of a test to see, can I write a song? At all. At all. And so I just had an idea. Oh, let me write a song that's as if Alice Cooper and Randy Newman wrote a song together. Right. That's an interesting mashup. Yes. Let's see what that would sound like. Randy Newman's kind of wry and faintly satirical, would you say? Yes, and he writes from inside the character. And Alice Cooper is what, kind of goth horror rock?

38:07Yeah, so I thought, oh, let's pick that kind of nasty subject matter, but then write it from inside, something like that, anyway. and I was in a band with some of the drummer from Talking Heads in art school and we started doing that song and people seemed to like it. So I started writing more songs. But after that, everything I wrote was in some ways more personal. It wasn't so much an exercise of can I write a song. Now I thought, oh, I can write a song, But now I'm free to write in my own way instead of trying to do this mash-up of other people's things. Extraordinary how it connected with people.

38:58Why is that? You tell me. I don't know. Maybe it's the tune. It's your most list. Of all, it's 610 million on Spotify, whatever that means. It's like it's the most streamed by some place. The second one is This Must Be The Place, Naive Melody, 339 million. One is this kind of frightening amount of data. A song about a murderer, and then there's this really sweet love song. Yeah, which got half as many listens. I think people enjoy tension, don't they? Yeah, they enjoy tension. and there's probably some lines in the song that say things that people wish they could say or that they've said to themselves but they would never say out loud.

39:49And it's a great song. Yeah, maybe that's what it is. Once in a Lifetime is third, which was the first one. I remember seeing that on Top of the Pops. Did you, around this era, when the first album came out, you went to the UK at a certain point. Did you break here first or you were just here to see what happened? Well, obviously we'd been playing in clubs in New York and we could play in clubs in, I think we maybe had a gig in Boston and some other places where you could drive within a few hours, so within a radius. And then, yes, the next audience we found was in the UK. and thought, yes, it's a bit of a ways to go to play in a club, but it was...

40:40You didn't have a huge following here. No, no, no, not at all. The album had sold some copies. A little bit, a little bit, but I think there was a lot of curiosity. There was curiosity like, oh, there's this new thing coming out of New York. Let's see what this is. So we played at a little club in Covent Garden and I think maybe on the same trip we were a support act for the Ramones at the Roundhouse. They'd been around a little bit longer than us. And it's kind of a tribute to that moment that a curious audience would be interested in us and the Ramones, musically worlds apart. Right. They're sort of primitive, not in a bad sense, but quite basic chord changes, kind of guitar.

41:35Yeah, but an audience could go, oh, we like both bands. Yeah. Would you recall, did you rub shoulders, elbows, whichever part of the body, with the UK bands at that time? I think you went and saw The Clash. Yeah, went to see The Clash somewhere. It might have been Brighton, possibly, something like that. I think it was out of town. You didn't think that much of it. Oh, no, I enjoyed it. We were aware of the Sex Pistols. Yeah, I think they had just kind of come out at the time, maybe. I'm not sure of the whole timeline. But, yeah, I became aware that the music scene here in the UK was more kind of consciously political and rebellious and kind of angry and all that.

42:35And it's reflected in the album covers and their stage presence and everything. Yes. I remember going to Virgin Records and we weren't signed to Virgin Records, but everyone was kind of friendly. And sitting – I don't think he was there. Maybe sitting in Richard Branson's office and watching a bunch of videos of Sex Pistols' performances. and I thought, this is, I mean, they're really good songs, but I also thought this is some of the funniest performances I've ever seen. What did you find funny about it? So it was kind of Keystone Cops. It was really kind of, here you might say shambolic or something like that.

43:28But the songs were really good. So I thought, oh, this is really a kind of wonderfully entertaining combination. That's interesting. Maybe not the way it was being perceived here at the time. Maybe not intended, but maybe, you know, Malcolm McLaren probably had a good sense of humor. I would imagine, yes. We should animadvert on the fact that you have a Scottish heritage, had been born in Scotland, and at that time I think had a British passport and not an American one, right? That is true. And so just dialing back for a second, your parents had emigrated, right, from Don Barton, which is what new class was?

44:12Yeah, from Glasgow, yes. I was born in Don Barton, but they lived in Glasgow, really. And you'd come over quite a bit, well, every couple of years? Yeah, every couple of years they'd come over because all their family was there. Their parents, sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews, everyone was around Glasgow. So they'd come over and bring me.

44:38Boy, Glasgow was black in those days. Was it? It was covered in soot. How old were you? I started to associate the smell of coal fires with family, with grandma and granddad and all that. So it became this kind of ode to family. Yeah. How old were you when you left? Oh, really young. Two. It was two when I left Scotland and then went to Canada for some years and following work. There was very little working in Scotland at that point. Your dad was an electrical engineer? That's correct. And what did your mom do? She, I think, had worked in Glasgow, had worked in the post office. And later on when she got to the States, she got a degree going to night school, got a degree and started teaching, teaching kids in school.

45:42So growing up, there was this sort of somewhat of a sense of being a little bit apart from your peers. And basically at a certain point you arrive in Baltimore, right? Yeah, yeah. The other kids couldn't understand a word my parents were saying. Obviously, at that age, I want to fit in. So I lost my accent really quickly, but my parents didn't. I remember the other kids would say, are they speaking English? And then my mother would say, we're speaking proper English. Yeah, that's the right answer. Queen's English. In the notes it said that your dad once fixed a submarine with a coat hanger. Can that be true?

46:28Could be. Could be. He didn't go into details, but that's the sort of thing he would do if something needed fixing around the house. Sometimes it would be with a coat hanger or duct tape or wedge a bit of whatever in there. That'll hold for a while. That'll do it. That'll hold for a while. I thought, yeah, submarine, yeah. Did they appreciate your musical efforts? And then once you became successful, what sense did they make of all of that? As far as I can tell, they appreciated my focus and passion for what I was doing, whether it was my little drawings or the music I was doing. It wasn't – certainly not to their taste.

47:19Occasionally they would say, David, David, David, that's not a rhyme. Those words right there. Not a full rhyme. Yeah, but I think they really appreciated that I was fully committed to doing this. And to their credit, they didn't say, oh, you've had your fun, now get a real job. But then when you hit the big time, would they come to shows? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And be grooving around? Yeah, they'd see all the audience having a great time and I think made them very proud. even if they still didn't quite get why that was, but they could see that we'd connected with an audience. So it was like, oh, look, it actually did pay off eventually.

48:11When was the last time you played with Talking Heads? I think when we got inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Which was 2002, something like that. Probably something like that. And we can pass over this if you prefer, but it's part of Talking Heads' law that there was friction within the band and that you were difficult to work with at times. I won't deny that. I think, as I said, my social skills were limited, but if I had a kind of artistic vision like the Stop Making Sense show, that tour, that performance, I'd say, okay, here's what I think we should do. And we're all going to wear gray and we're going to do the da-da-da-da.

49:02I got to be a little bossy, a little bit of a bossy pants. And it was kind of, I knew what I wanted. And I didn't know how to get it in a kind of nice cooperative way. It was more like, okay, it has to be this, which is often true of musicians and bands when they're younger. They have an idea of what it has to be. And so we'll be like, no, the drum sound has to be like this. And that means the world. It's actually not as important as all that. But when you're that age, it can be everything. Yes. So I know that I was not always the most pleasant person to work with. And it's bringing to mind the old Keith Richards expression about Mick Jagger, I think.

49:57He's like, actually, that's a Mick Jagger impression. Keith Richards, what does he sound like? I can't do it. Anyway, he'd say he's got LSD. Do you remember this one? No. What was that? He said, lead singer disease.

50:12And there was this sort of tension between, because as a consumer, you think, well, the guy in front is singing and he's got the best lights. And he or she is obviously the most important one. And then you find out, oh, actually, you know, Roger Daltrey didn't write the songs. as Pete Townsend did, right? And maybe it's more of a cooperative than you might think. Exactly. So with respect to Talking Heads, sometimes I hear it described as your band, you know, David Byrne and the Talking Heads, or sometimes it's Talking Heads, like a band which is a kind of collection of equals, right? Which was it, do you think?

50:54Well, a bit of both. I think sometimes, as I said, sometimes I had an idea stuck in my head about this is what we're going to do. And I would kind of push for it. But it would have never worked if it wasn't a great band. Yeah. We didn't play incredibly well together. And the songwriting duties were shared or somewhat? Sometimes they were shared. Sometimes not. Yeah, really depended. Sometimes we would, there were records where we kind of jammed and then I would write words in a tune on top of some kind of improvisation that we'd come up with. And now, all these years on, are the four of you in a good place, would you say?

51:44Pretty good, yes. The Stop Making Sense film came out a year or two ago. They did a remaster. Yeah, a remaster. Which means what? they cleaned it up and cleaned up the sound. They found the original negative in Kansas and managed to have it looking better than it ever did. So yeah, they did all that. And lo and behold, there was an audience, not just the original fans, but a whole younger generation that was discovering this stuff, which was really kind of wonderful. It's been described as one of, or maybe the greatest concert films of all time. And again, I remember when it came out, and there's a lot that could be said about it, the staging.

52:34It was directed by Jonathan Demme. It also directed Silence of the Lambs, speaking of psycho killers. Do you want to explain what it was about the staging that made it felt special, and what kind of the impulse was behind it? Well, one part of the staging was that I wanted to reveal how the music was put together and let the audience in on that, like pulling back the curtain in a way. So we'd start with just me and then add Tina playing bass and then add some singers and then add this and one by one adding the thing. So as each person came in, you heard what they were adding to the sound until the whole thing was assembled.

53:19And then, and then we're off to the races. So I thought that was one part of it. I think the other part was in some of the staging and lighting and movement. There was a movement that emerged out of improvisations, and the lighting was almost entirely what would be referred to as white light, but white light from different instruments, different lighting sources. So it might be fluorescent light or it might be incandescent, and each one has a different quality. To the eye, after you've become accustomed to it, it all seems white. But it actually is very different. Of course, fluorescent light is very, you know, on the blue-green side of things.

54:10But our eye kind of and brain kind of filters that out, and it looks like it's just a cold office light. So I thought, okay, I'm not going to do the typical rock band things with colored flashing lights, flashing in time to the song or kind of washing us all in all these colors. let's keep it again in a way that reveals rather than obscures so that was a lot of it and i think that whole all those things gave it a kind of narrative arc in a way uh which at least then that was kind of rare for a concert concerts were you play one song after another sprinkle the hits in there and you're done. So this was something where you actually go on a kind of journey and you start in one place and you end somewhere very different.

55:10So I think that may have been the strength of that and what Jonathan captured as well. It's putting me in mind of, because you made that film, you also made a fictional feature film which has a musical element as well. True Stories, right? I remember being aware of it when it came up, but I didn't see it. So I watched it in preparation for this. And it's a really interesting piece of work. The tone in particular, the way it's pitched, where it's about a middle American town in Texas with kind of quirky stories of different people who happen to live there. There's a main character played by John Goodman, a young John Goodman.

55:53and what's striking is it's you know because it came out at a time when I suppose there was things to like about America and things to be less keen on whether it was the politics or aspects of the culture that might have seemed small-minded I mean that was kind of a long summation but I guess I'm curious about how you come to make it but also in general this relationship that you have with America certainly at that time that was ambivalent but was neither that's obviously critical, but nor was it fully comfortable. Yeah, I'll take that. It started off as a series of images. I loved a lot of Fellini movies and other films like that, and I thought, oh, I can start with images of America from a slightly surreal point of view, how kind of odd it can look when you just really just look at it in a straight-ahead way.

56:53I thought, okay, now we need a story. And I remember reading stories about these people who had curious lifestyles or done odd things in their lives in tabloid newspapers in a supermarket. I thought, oh, those will be the people who live in the town. So then I started doing some location hunting and things like that. Stories like, what, from the Weekly World News? Yeah, yeah, yeah, Weekly World News. A woman doesn't leave her bed for 30 years. Exactly. A woman doesn't leave her bed for 30 years. She has her food brought in and everything. A man advertises for a wife. There was another one, a couple that hasn't spoken.

57:35Yeah, a couple that lives together but hasn't spoken directly to one another. Was that a real story? Yeah, those were all real stories. where I can't verify that they're all true, but they were presented as if they were true, hence the title of the movie. And so I thought, oh, these would be the people that have found very quirky and creative ways to make a life that kind of works for them. Anyway, so I spent a lot of time kind of looking around in Texas for where we would shoot these different things and found that a lot of people in Texas are quite eccentric and they're proud of their eccentricities.

58:22So when the film came out, quite a number of critics and viewers thought I was making fun of these people. But the people in Texas who saw it thought, no, that's us. we're proud of our kind of individuality and the strange things that we do. What do you think your attitude is? I feel like I'm asking you, how did you do the trick, you know, magician? But in a sense, like, if you were to show your hand, because I couldn't tell sometimes, does he love these people? Does he feel a little bit of metropolitan disdain? Because he came from a Manhattan art scene, So they obviously weren't your tribe. I couldn't quite tell where you were landing.

59:11I think that confused a lot of people. People assumed that because I was from the kind of Manhattan art scene, as you say, that I was looking down at these people. I didn't feel that way. I felt they were just as creative in their own way as any of the people I was normally associated with. I felt like I was celebrating their creativity and originality. I was obviously meant to be amusing as well. So I didn't feel that way, but I knew, I became aware relatively quickly that people assumed that because I was part of this arty scene that I couldn't be truly sympathetic with these people. What do you feel, you know, about someone who, in some ways, you've been a student of America and American culture.

1:00:00um do you it's such a big kind of grand question but to what extent do you feel comfortable in america you know you've got a quite a political outlook at times even i remember it's striking reading something you wrote when the first gulf war was going on um and you said this would have been 2004 i'm guessing it made me feel like i didn't know my country and its people or even my own friends anymore. I felt lost and adrift in my home. I felt angry and fucked up every day. That was when the United States invaded Iraq. Yeah. With basically no cause. But I'm curious, so now, in a weird way, don't you feel even more that way now?

1:00:46I mean, as we speak, the National Guard has been unleashed in Los Angeles. And probably in other cities, but Which bears some of the hallmarks of a kind of coup d 'etat in some respects, right? And that feels like that's been going on for a few years now. Exactly. The process that I think resulted in this is long going. I think it began in the 80s, maybe, maybe even before, but definitely in the 80s where there was a shift in laws and financial situations and laws governing finance, laws governing voting, all kinds of things that caused, say, a good part of the country, their wages and jobs to be stagnant.

1:01:38They maybe went up a little bit, but for the most part, they were kind of stagnant, and then kind of the rich just got richer and richer and richer. Reagan-Bush kind of era. Reagan-Bush, but it continued through Clinton and Obama. They didn't stop it. They just continued the same policies. Vast divergence of incomes. Yes, exactly. I mean, you have to remember, it was Clinton who was involved in repealing a lot of the laws that were regulating finance. and those kinds of things. And you go, well, we'll see what that did. Not too long after that, you have like 2008 and you have the whole finance collapse of almost the whole system and the government bailing out the banks but not the people who lost their homes.

1:02:20And so you have all that and people are going to be really angry, really feel like we don't trust the government. Look what they've done to us. So I get that. Yeah, so I'm kind of torn because I completely empathize with where those feelings are coming from. But I feel like there's been an effort to kind of prey on those. Have you met Trump? No, no. I feel like he's copying your big suit.

1:02:58Have you noticed how big his suit is? It is pretty big. Like it's long, the tie is everybody knows. Do you know about the tie? Yeah, he thought he believes it has a slimming effect to have this long tie. And also a very long suit jacket as well. Yes. It's very kind of presentational. So like it's TV. It's a show. He has a sense of theatrics. Do you see him as a showman? Absolutely. Because his live events are like live shows. And, you know, you've spoken over the years about your adoption of preacherly cadences or a kind of call and response. I guess gospel influenced preacherly delivery famously on Once in a Lifetime, where you set a repeated phrase.

1:03:49You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack. You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile. Apologies for maybe you won't appreciate the comparison, but I think he's doing something similar at his live events and his ability to command the crowd. So that power clearly resonates with people. Yeah. I haven't been to one of his rallies either, but I gather it's kind of a riveting performance, even though when you literally translate what he's saying sometimes, it's complete gibberish. Yes. I feel like you appreciate gibberish. Yes. Yes. I'm aware that how things are said is as important as what's being said.

1:04:38You know, I think we're doing great. How's your energy? Are you okay? I'm okay. Have I dragged you into political terrain? How comfortable are you there? I'm okay. I'm okay. I mean, I have an online magazine, Reasons to be Cheerful, and we try and find people who've found solutions to things. So we're not just looking for cheery. It's called cheerful, but we're not just looking for cheery stories of, oh, here's, you know, someone who rescued a dog out of a tree. Which would be good, though, by the way. Yeah, if a dog could get up there. And I think a lot of the music I do is meant to be a kind of, or maybe not meant to be, but it acts as a kind of counterforce or counterbalance.

1:05:20acts as a kind of resistance to a lot of the partisanship and anger that's out there. Having sort of talked a little bit about Trump and then the other kind of elephant in the room of the culture, I guess, is the idea that, oh, well, we're sort of, it's a bit passe now, but this idea of cancel culture, which hit movies. I mean, actually that suggests I endorse that term, which I don't know if I necessarily do. But is that on your radar at all? Do you have a view on any of that? Yeah, I think it's nuanced. If someone has actually done kind of not-so-good things kind of recently and tried to kind of hide them, Then I thought, oh, it's fine to call that out.

1:06:20Sometimes people are canceled or, you know, percento non grata if they've done something way in the past, 20, 30 years ago. I feel like human beings can change. We can learn from our mistakes. We do make mistakes. In that case, let's look at what they've done since then. If they made a mistake, and it's not this really, really horrible thing, then let's see if they've kind of made amends in how they've behaved since then. Because maybe that was just a mistake. And the thing with the internet is you can dredge up the past on everybody and embarrass almost anybody by something they've done in the past.

1:07:12Yes, although it kind of seems to stop around 2000 or 2005. Like anything pre-digital media is sort of – then you have to actually go into the stacks or a newspaper or a micro page. Yeah, a bit more work. Yeah. Yeah. I – some years ago, I realized that this promotional video that I did for Stop Making Sense when it first came out in the mid-80s, that I did this little funny little thing where I interviewed myself as all these different characters. A woman, an old man, a black man, a whole number of characters. And I realized, oh, God, look, I'm in blackface. For real? For real. It was not done as a parody or caricature or anything like that.

1:08:10But that was one of the characters. And I realized, oh, God, I would never do that now. that was a long time ago this is a clip that's available online, it's probably on YouTube it's probably available in other places as well, so I thought this is not hidden, this is not something that's on some obscure piece of videotape or whatever, it's right there so I said okay and I made an announcement and said I did this, here it is I did this. I would never do this now, but here it is. You self-cancelled. I self-cancelled. And I called up Spike Lee and said, you know, I did this. I just want you to know that I'm going to announce that I did this.

1:09:05And he said, David, I know you. People know you. Don't worry about it. We know. But at the same time, there were a few organizations that did cancel me. They said, okay, you have a speaking engagement. We can't have you talk. For real? Yeah. That was a few years ago. So that was the tenor of the times that anything that might appear tainted, a person that might appear tainted, well, you have to distance yourself from that. there was a little tinge of like the Red Guards. Ah, culturally incorrect, off to the farm for you. There was a bit of that. And it was like the Red Guards. It was often kind of younger people who were the arbiters of who was going to get sent to the work farm.

1:10:04I think that's receded a lot. But there are, yeah, people have made mistakes, but there's also people who don't regret what they did and have continued to do things like that, which you should be called out. Yeah, it's complicated, isn't it? I think sometimes people get quote-unquote cancelled and people think, well, all that guy did is this, And then you realize actually like an iceberg under the surface, there's a kind of community of people who had a horrific experience with this person and that you're just seeing a small part of it. And that the reason there's a swarm, it's like you Spike Lee spoke up for you.

1:10:45But in a situation where you had not been a stand up guy, then he wouldn't have and other people wouldn't have. And people like, you know, David Burns had it coming for a while, you know. Absolutely. And justifiably so. Yeah. I think you got away with it. I think you walked that line. Saying got away with it doesn't sound that good. Well, when we older white guys pontificate, we should be on our manners. Yeah, absolutely. You know what I mean? Well, thank you for coming by, David. Thank you. It's a thrill for me, like the 15-year-old me, actually, and the 25 and the 35 and the 45-year-old. So they're all super excited.

1:11:32And thanks for indulging my slightly chaotic romp through your catalog and your life. Thank you. Thank you for having me on your show.

1:11:52Welcome back. And thank you to David for joining me. He is, I think we could say iconic. He's a brilliant musician and a maker of images, a stager of extravaganzas, and by his own admission, a bit of a bossy pants, which is a nice phrase. Nice that he can own that. And maybe that was his way of doing some accountability because his bandmates have made some unguarded remarks in other forums about their feelings. You called Trump obese, says Millie. Yes, I did. Well, I don't think I called him it. I think I made a clinical observation because that implies judgment. Millie's done some research. But she says that in his February 2019 annual physical, Trump, who is six feet three, is he, tipped the scales at 243 pounds.

1:12:55That gave him a BMI of 30.4, just over the edge of obesity. But in the 2025 report, this is a lot of information. The president weighs 224 pounds and stands six feet 2.5 inches. Where are we going? Under the BMI calculator, he would currently be categorized overweight. but not obese. Maybe an apology is in order, says Millie, facetiously. But the general point I think still stands. He said if you wear a tie, it has a slimming effect. And that, I think, came courtesy of Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey. I think he revealed that piece of information. I want to do better with my singing.

1:13:37I have a gold record and I have a record label. what would you say was their biggest hit Millie says psycho killer oh Jesus that's going nowhere

1:13:55I work better in falsetto it doesn't work run run run run it doesn't work it doesn't work in my range it's interesting that he's never embraced rap has he you may find yourself it's kind of right living in a shotgun shack you may find yourself it's not really singing living in a beautiful house with a beautiful i'm not feeling i'm not feeling spirit i can't i'm not channeling it i can't dial it in burning down the house was a good one

1:14:33no it's not happening there what was that uh my good friend adam buxton host of the Adam Buxton podcast has also done an interview with David Byrne did it around the same time I did mine that may be I think we've interviewed the same person before but never in such a short space of time interesting to compare them maybe fun homework, fun little assignment that's about it apart from the credits, Psycho Killer Quezquez, the producer was Millie Chu, she's not the Psycho Killer, the assistant producer was Burning Down the House, Artemis Irvin. The production manager was... I'm having a run out of...

1:15:16You May Find Yourself, Francesca Bassett. The music in this series was by Living in a Shotgun Shack, Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was... I'm going to stop doing it now. Aaron Fellows, this is a Mindhouse production for... Spotify. It's bespoke.

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