Talking Heads

One of the great bands of the era. the Talking Heads were able to neatly marry the no rules ethos of punk to the better experimental try anything ways of prog and still play to a pop audience. they worked with Brian Eno, graduates of Funkadelic, avant garde filmakers and turned out a body of work that stands up as a completely unique and inimitable. In the arty brainiac of David Byrne they were able to make music that avoided the cliches and conventions of radio rock and roll, allbeit during a relatively open minded period for radio programming. But Byrne was no one man band. Guitarist keyboardist Jerry Harrison was a vetern of the Modern Lovers and probably was invaluable in opening doors in the art world of late 70's New York, as well as having stellar chops. Rhythym section Chris Franz and Tina Weymoth were adept at incorporating world music, funk, rock, and whatever else was coming out of the band, and in their spare time they made great dance music with the Tom Tom Club. A... Read more

One of the most inventive bands of the New Wave era.  David Byrne wrote some very fine songs and was a compelling, riveting performer, which is rare among the wimp art rock crowd.  The rhythm section was more than adequate and Jerry Harrison, late of Jonathan Richmond and the Modern Lovers ably filled in the gaps as a solid, no-flash sideman.  This band was very adept at blending musical genres outside of rock into the mix, and left the scene before they got over-recorded..

David Byrne can really get on my nerves,but this band did put out some great tunes in the musically dismal 80s.

I'm getting their recently released digital remastered CDs, and I'm falling in love with this band all over again. There will never be music like this again. Ever. David Byrne is a genius and the rest of the band ain't that bad either.

Very underrated band. David Byrne was ahead of his time...

I really enjoy that song called And She Was. Coolness. It sounds like a fantasy kind of song. Fantasy is the best.

Any band that produces Once In A Lifetime prooves talent.

They definately left their mark in the 80's, but I still find it kind of wierd how they have not had a hit since then. I really thought they would rock the charts for decades. I guess they weren't as good as I thought....

Up to 'Remain in Light' they definitely deserved a 5 star rating, but thereafter lost it a bit once they'd dropped much of their funkiness, 'Burning down the house' excepted. Still, one of the very few bands who were truly distinctive and original.

The Talking Heads--one of the top 25 bands of all-time probably. They probably would've been surprised that they'd end up on a Pop/Top 40 list after their humble beginnings playing in New York's CBGB's. Led by the intelligent, geeky, quirky figure David Byrne, they continually released amazing work from 1977 until 1986. Their self-titled debut featured my favorite song of theirs, Psycho Killer, followed by More Songs About Buildings and Food the next year. They experimented with African beats and rhythms throughout the early '80s, especially on the Remain in Light album, which included the famous Once in a Lifetime. They followed this effort up with Fear of Music, Speaking in Tongues, and Little Creatures. It's nearly impossible not to love the nervous bantering of Byrne on songs like Life During Wartime, Burning Down the House, and And She Was. Also notable was their Stop Making Sense album/movie of 1984. Incredible band overall.

The Talking Heads were a great new wave/post punk band, but the group was a terrible rock/pop artist just as Mozart and Louis Armstrong would be. (The RateItAll management should really clean up these lists.) With that objection out of the way, as a new wave band, there really was no other act that surpassed their contribution to the genre, releasing a string of good to great studio efforts from 1977 to 1988. Fronted by the definitive intellectual geek David Byrne, the band was in essence snotty, arty punks who still appreciated the complexities of world beats, funk and disco. The Heads stuck true to form through their first five studio efforts until "Little Creatures" (1985) which has the band becoming more pop oriented, accessible, and therefore commercially successful as evidenced by the biger singles from that effort (eg "And She Was" and "Road To Nowhere") and the subsequent single "Wild Wild Life" from "True Stories" (1986). Though most new wave acts were singles bands, the ... Read more

One of the 80's best. Byrne wears great suits.

A great group that deserves more recognition!

I can't praise this band, or David Byrne highly enough. Even the spin-off group 'The Tom-tom Club' were great. They've inspired myself and the rest of my band in a lot of our own work. Check out the albums 'The Name of This Band is' and 'Sand in the Vaseline' for thier early work, and 'Little Creatures' and 'Naked' for thier more famous stuff. What ever you do, don't miss the 'Stop Making Sense' film. It was the first ever true concert video, shown in the cinema! If I could give them ten stars I would.

Kind of quirky, kind of artsy fartsy, kind of retro, but otherwise OK. "House", "River", "Lifetime", will always be essential notables.

I only liked that one song from Little Monsters.

The Talking Heads paved the way for the New Wave sound of the late 70s/early 80s and help bring forth the "video age" of music. They had a very hip and artistic sound.

Classic...classic....classic....that's all I have to say :o)

tThe second best band to come out of the eighties. Really great music.