Talking Heads release Remain In Light, the album of the year

Talking Heads : Born Under Punches

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On October 8 1980,  Talking Heads released Remain In Light, arguably the best album of the year.  

The songs began with single chord jams inspired by African polyrhythms and recorded at Compass Point Studios in The Bahamas where drummer Chris Frantz and bassist Tina Weymouth rented a house. David Byrne, who had alfeady recorded most of My Life In The Bush With Ghosts with Brian Eno,  would tell the the Daily News that this record “wasn’t intended to be a Talking Heads LP at all, but after we put some tracks down, some of the sounds started taking shape and became songs. I was very unsure of it, but toward the end of the rehearsals I was really pleased with the progress, and I thought to myself, anybody who doesn’t like this is nuts.” 

This is how the German experimental band Can recorded songs, which is why all of the musicians are credited on every song.

 

For the longest time, the songs had no lyrics or even titles. Byrne struggled with words, eventually finding some of his best remembered lyrics in books ( the world moves on a woman's hips) in newspaper headlines ( the heat goes on) or inspired by the up and coming sounds of rap music ( Facts are simple, facts are straight). Adrian Belew came in to record on a song that would become "The Great Curve" not knowing where Byrne would be singing. It would be up to Byrne to sing around the solo.

Talking Heads and producer Brian Eno originally agreed to credit all songs in alphabetical order to "David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison and Tina Weymouth" after failing to devise an accurate formula for the split, but the album was released with the label credit: "all songs written by David Byrne & Brian Eno (except "Houses In Motion" and 'The Overload", written by David Byrne, Brian Eno & Jerry Harrison)".

"We had been told another untruth by David Byrne and so had our listeners,” Frantz wrote in his 2020 memoir Remain In Love. “This was especially hurtful because without our persistence, love and musicianship, Remain in Light would never have been made.”