on seeing my idol
Brian Eno and David Byrne, 1981. Photographed by Marcia Resnick
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At sixteen, I used to drive to the gym at five in the morning while listening to More Songs About Buildings and Food. Hearing The Good Thing on loop was one of the few things that kept me awake, speeding on gravel rural roads on less than three hours of sleep.
At seventeen, I spent 24 hours solo in the depths of Algonquin Park, three days of canoeing away from civilization. I climbed down a tree to get to the lake and sat for hours watching the sun, singing every Talking Heads song I could think of from memory. All of Stop Making Sense, all of Speaking in Tongues, all of Remain in Light.
At eighteen, I felt the anxiety of the world pass me by with new elections and hundreds of new kinds of global disasters. I listened to Life During Wartime, and felt for once that someone really knew what it felt like to live in the times I was living in, and how to translate that feeling into a four minute song.
At twenty-two, I listened to Don't Worry About The Government as I walked through a government town to my public service job and wondered about how politics could ever reform into something progressive and meaningful.
At twenty-four, I think about every moment of my life that has ever overflowed with love and how I have had the wherewithal to put on This Must Be The Place (Naive Melody), the only love song that the band ever wrote. Every good sunset, every graduation, every playlist ever made for a beloved, every night of dancing that turned into an early morning - the chords of this song have sound-tracked only the very best moments.
Sometime last year I made up my mind that 2026 would finally be the year that I would travel to see David Byrne, regardless of price and regardless of place. Byrne is in his 70s, and while he's still appearing super energetic, he really could retire from touring at any point in time. There is no single other musician who has made such an impact on me other than DB. You can imagine my delight upon finding out that Byrne himself would be coming to my city, a moment meant to be.
So a few weeks ago, I packed up from a beautiful beach day and headed to the theatre to see DB in all his glory. It was one of the best shows of my entire life. I was sat beside a chatty couple from Kelowna, who were thrilled to be seeing David Byrne for the first time - they had been Talking Heads fans since 1982 (I neglected to tell them that this was well before I ever began to walk this earth). During This Must Be The Place, I looked over at them and they were both crying, just like me.
One of the reasons why TMBTP sounds the way it does is because each of the band members switched instruments and played ones that they were least skilled at. The song is repetitive, with very light plucking and assorted beats. It's perfect. To me, there has never been a better song ever written.
Every piece of music I have loved since I was sixteen is in some way linked to Talking Heads. I am a devotee of the brilliant Brian Eno, who of course was one of their greatest collaborators. In the 2020s, I love Fred Again.. who is the godson & mentee of Eno. Modest Mouse is one of my favourite bands in no small part because Isaac Brock kind of sounds like Byrne, especially on tracks like People as Places as People. DB mentioned during the show that Arthur Russell arranged their biggest hit Psycho Killer, which lit up my brain - I have been a fan of Russell's since I first heard Calling Out of Context. The threads of Byrne's artistry have changed so much of my life. Seeing him in person felt very full circle.
I've also adopted some part of Byrne's musical philosophy. Byrne famously rejected the term 'world music' to describe everything that wasn't written in English or belonging to the English-speaking 'west'.
To restrict your listening to English-‐language pop is like deciding to eat the same meal for the rest of your life. [...] Hearing the right piece of music at the right time of your life can inspire a radical change, destructive personal behavior or even fascist politics. Sometimes all at the same time. On the other hand, music can inspire love, religious ecstasy, cathartic release, social bonding and a glimpse of another dimension. A sense that there is another time, another space and another, better, universe. It can heal a broken heart, offer a shoulder to cry on and a friend when no one else understands. There are times when you want to be transported, to get your mind around some stuff it never encountered before. And what if the thing transporting you doesn't come from your neighborhood? From 'I Hate World Music'
Reading that article as a young teenager changed my way of seeing the world - it was important not only to listen to music that was unfamiliar to me, but to appreciate it, to platform it, and to recognize that practically every part of the popular music that I enjoyed in English was either influenced, or a blatant rip-off of other cultures' music. I listen to Fela Kuti, William Onyeabor and about a thousand other artists in no small part because Byrne inspired me to.
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In his music, you can hear this great love for the world. There is a shared joy surrounding humanity - with a realistic view of all its terror and horror. Byrne introduced And She Was as a song about "the happiest girl he ever knew" - a song about a girl who goes into a big field to take LSD. He also writes songs like Houses in Motion, which are fundamentally about corruption under capitalism, and about trying to change society as an individual, under so many piles of dirt & filth and excess of power.
DB's new album Who Is The Sky? is more comedic than some of his previous music. I hadn't spent much time listening to the new album beyond Everybody Laughs, but listening to I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party and My Apartment is My Friend, were both lovely moments of levity amidst a set that felt more urgent and nostalgic. I loved hearing the light and almost child-like instrumentation of these tracks, a warm blanket of comfort.
Byrne has this way of capturing a secondary beauty about the world, like he's peeled back a layer of life and has been able to see the reality of the moments that make life worth living. I am grateful to his artistic capacity and the ways that his music has made me slow down, take a look around, and say wow yes my life is so good. Life is so good. To be a human being present on this earth is an infinite gift.
I write this post to share with you how lucky I was to see this man on stage, but also in the spirit of thanks for all the moments I have spent with a wide variety of people who read this blog listening to David Byrne.
At present, I write this in my apartment, hosting a little wine and writing night. Upon telling Sophie what I was writing, she said she always associated me with This Must Be the Place. Possibly one of the highest compliments I've ever received. I am grateful that this music will continue to soundtrack my life.
If anything, I will always remember being twenty-four, freshly sunburnt, eyes in awe, watching the greatest musician I've ever known dancing around a stage right in front of me. Nothing to think about other than how much the moment meant to me.