Remain in Light
Encyclopedia
Remain in Light is the fourth studio album by American New Wave
band Talking Heads
, released on 8 October 1980 on Sire Records
. It was recorded at locations in the Bahamas and the United States between July and August 1980 and was produced
by the quartet's long-time collaborator Brian Eno
. The album peaked at number 19 on the Billboard 200
in the US and at number 21 on the UK Albums Chart
. Two singles
were released from Remain in Light: "Once in a Lifetime
" and "Houses in Motion
". The record was certified Gold in the US and in Canada during the 1980s.
The members of Talking Heads wanted to make an album that dispelled notions of frontman and chief lyricist David Byrne
leading a back-up band. They decided to experiment with African polyrhythms and, with Eno, recorded the instrumental tracks as a series of samples and loops, a novel idea at the time. Additional musicians were frequently used throughout the studio sessions. The lyric writing process slowed Remain in Lights progress, but was concluded after Byrne drew inspiration from academic literature on Africa. The artwork was crafted with the help of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
's computers and designing company M&Co.. Following the album's completion, Talking Heads expanded to nine members for promotional concerts.
Remain in Light was widely acclaimed by critics. Praise centred on its cohesive merging of disparate genres and sonic experimentation. The record has featured in several publications' lists of the best albums of the 1980s and the best albums of all time. It is often considered Talking Heads' magnum opus
. In 2006, it was remastered and reissued with the addition of four unfinished outtakes.
, and decided to take time off to pursue personal interests. Byrne worked with Eno, the record's producer, on an experimental
collaboration named My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
. Jerry Harrison
produced an album for soul
singer Nona Hendryx
at the Sigma Sound Studios
branch in New York City; the singer and the location were later used during the recording of Remain in Light on the advice of Harrison. Husband and wife Chris Frantz
and Tina Weymouth
discussed the possibility of leaving the band after the latter suggested that Byrne's level of control was excessive. Frantz was not open to the idea of ending Talking Heads, and the two decided to take a long vacation in the Caribbean to ponder the state of the band and their marriage. During the trip, the couple became involved in Haitian Vodou religious ceremonies and practised with several types of native percussion instruments. In Jamaica, they socialised with the famous reggae
rhythm section
of Sly and Robbie
.
Frantz and Weymouth ended their holiday by purchasing an apartment above Compass Point Studios
in Nassau
, the Bahamas, where the band had recorded their second album More Songs About Buildings and Food
. Byrne joined the duo and Harrison there in the spring of 1980. The band members realised that it had been solely up to Byrne to bear the creative burden of crafting songs even though the tracks were performed as a quartet. The conception of Remain in Light occurred partly because they tired of the notion of a singer leading a back-up band; the ideal they aimed for, according to Byrne, was "sacrificing our egos for mutual cooperation". The frontman additionally wanted to escape "the psychological paranoia and personal torment" of what he had been writing and feeling in 1970s New York City. Instead of the band writing music to Byrne's lyrics, Talking Heads performed instrumental jam sessions without words using the Fear of Music song "I Zimbra
" as a starting point.
Eno arrived in the Bahamas three weeks after Byrne and was at first reluctant to work with the band again after collaborating on the previous two full-length releases. He changed his mind after hearing the instrumental demo tapes and noted, "I absolutely love the direction you're going in." Both parties decided to experiment with the communal African way of making music, in which individual parts mesh as polyrhythms to create a cohesive whole. Afrodisiac, the 1973 Afrobeat
record from Nigerian musician Fela Kuti
, became the template for the album. Weymouth has commented that the advent of the 1980s marked the beginnings of hip-hop music, which made Talking Heads realise that the musical landscape was changing. Before the studio sessions, long-time friend David Gans
instructed the band members that "the things one doesn’t intend are the seeds for a more interesting future". He encouraged them to experiment and improvise when recording and to utilise "mistakes".
Melody Attack throughout the studio process after watching a Japanese game show of the same name. Harrison has commented that the ambition was to blend rock and African genres, rather than simply imitate African music. Eno's production techniques and personal approach were key to the record's conception. The process was geared to promote the expression of instinct and spontaneity without overtly focusing on the sound of the final product. Sections and instrumentals were recorded one at a time in a discontinuous process. Samples and loops played a key part at a time when computer programs could not yet adequately perform such functions. The band's performances and jam sessions acted as sampling and looping mechanisms. Eno has compared the creative process to "looking out to the world and saying, 'What a fantastic place we live in. Let's celebrate it.'"
After a few sessions in the Bahamas, engineer Rhett Davies
left following an argument with the producer over the fast speed of recording. Steven Stanley
, who since the age of 17 had engineered for musicians such as Bob Marley
, stepped in to cover the workload. He is credited by Frantz for helping create the future single "Once in a Lifetime". The album was crafted using a Lexicon
224 digital studio reverb effects unit obtained by engineer and mixer
Dave Jerden
; the machine was one of the first of its kind and was able to simulate environments such as chambers and rooms through interchangeable programs. Like Davies, Jerden was unhappy at the quick pace Eno wanted to record sonically complicated compositions, but did not complain. The basic tracks focused wholly on rhythms and were all performed in a minimalist method using only one chord
. Each section was recorded as a long loop to enable the creation of compositions through the positioning or merging loops in different ways.
The tracks made Byrne rethink his vocal style and he tried singing to the instrumental songs, but sounded "stilted". Few vocal sections were recorded in the Bahamas. The writing process for the lyrics occurred when the band returned to the US and was split between New York City and California. Harrison booked Talking Heads into Sigma Sound, which focused primarily on R&B music, after convincing the owners that the band's work could bring them a new type of clientele. In New York City, Byrne struggled with writer's block
. Harrison and Eno spent their time tweaking the compositions recorded in the Bahamas, while Frantz and Weymouth often did not show up at the studio. Doubts began to surface about whether the album would be completed. The recording sessions only built up pace after the recruitment of guitarist Adrian Belew
at the request of Byrne, Harrison, and Eno. He was advised to add guitar solos
to the Compass Point tracks by using his distinctive style of running instruments through a Roland
guitar synthesiser.
Byrne recorded all the tracks, as they were after Belew had performed, in a cassette and looked to Africa to break his writer's block. He realised that, when African musicians forget words, they often improvise and make new ones up. The lyricist used a portable tape recorder and tried to create onomatopoeic rhymes in the style of Eno, who believed that lyrics were never the centre of a song's meaning. Byrne continuously listened to his recorded scatting until convinced that he was no longer "hearing nonsense". After the frontman was satisfied, Harrison invited Nona Hendryx to Sigma Sound to record backing vocals for the album. She was advised extensively on her vocal delivery by Byrne, Frantz, and Weymouth, and often sang in a trio with Byrne and Eno. The voice sessions were followed by the overdubbing
process. Brass player Jon Hassell
, who had been working on parts of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, was hired to perform trumpet
and horn
sections. In August 1980, half of the album was mixed by Eno and engineer John Potoker in New York City with the assistance of Harrison, while the other half was mixed by Byrne and Jerden at Eldorado Studios
in Los Angeles.
and his MIT Media Lab
team. Using Melody Attack as inspiration, the couple created a collage of red warplanes flying in formation over the Himalayas
. The planes are an artistic depiction of Grumman Avenger planes in honour of Weymouth's father who was a US Navy Admiral
. The idea for the back cover included simple portraits of the band members. Weymouth attended MIT regularly during the summer of 1980 and worked with Bender's colleague, Scott Fisher
, on the computer renditions of the ideas. The process was tortuous because computer power was limited in the early 1980s and the mainframe
alone took up several rooms. Weymouth and Fisher shared a passion for masks and used the concept to experiment with the portraits. The faces were blotted out with blocks of red colour. Weymouth considered superimposing Eno's face on top of all four portraits to insinuate his egotism—the producer wanted to be on the cover art together with Talking Heads—but decided against it in the end.
The rest of the artwork and the liner notes
were crafted by the graphic design
er Tibor Kalman
and his company M&Co. Kalman was a fervent critic of formalism
and professional design in art and advertisements. He offered his services for free to create publicity, and discussed using unconventional materials such as sandpaper
and velour
for the LP sleeve. Weymouth, who was sceptical of hiring a designing firm, vetoed Kalman's ideas and held firm on the MIT computerised images. The designing process made the band members realise that the title Melody Attack was "too flippant" for the music recorded, and they adopted Remain in Light instead. Byrne has noted, "Besides not being all that melodic, the music had something to say that at the time seemed new, transcendent, and maybe even revolutionary, at least for funk rock songs." The image of the warplanes was relegated to the back of the sleeve and the doctored portraits became the front cover. Kalman later suggested that the planes were not removed altogether because they seemed appropriate during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979–1981.
Weymouth advised Kalman that she wanted simple typography
in a bold sans serif font. M&Co. followed the instructions and came up with the idea of inverting the "A"s in "TALKING HEADS". Weymouth and Frantz decided to use the joint credit acronym C/T for the artwork, while Bender and Fisher used initials and code names because the project was not an official MIT venture. The design credits read "HCL, JPT, DDD, WALTER GP, PAUL, C/T". The final mass-produced version of Remain in Light boasted one of the first computer-designed record jackets in the history of music. Psychoanalyst Michael A. Brog has called its front cover a "disarming image, which suggests both splitting and obliteration of identity" and which introduces the listener to the album's recurring theme of "identity disturbance"; he states, "The image is in bleak contrast to the title with the obscured images of the band members unable to 'remain in light'."
Brian Eno advised Talking Heads that the music on Remain in Light was too dense for a quartet to perform. The band expanded to nine musicians for the tours in support of the album. The augmenting members recruited by Harrison were Belew, Funkadelic
keyboardist
Bernie Worrell
, bassist
Busta "Cherry" Jones, Ashford & Simpson
percussionist Steven Scales, and backing vocalist Dolette MacDonald. The larger group performed sound checks in Frantz and Weymouth's loft by following the rhythms established by Worrell, who had studied at the New England Conservatory and Juilliard School
. Their first appearance was on 23 August 1980 at the Heatwave festival
in Canada in front of 70,000 people; Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times
called the band's new music a "rock-funk sound with dramatic, near show-stopping force". On 27 August, the expanded Talking Heads performed a showcase of tracks to an audience of 125,000 at the Wollman Rink
in New York City's Central Park
. The Canada and New York gigs were the only ones initially planned, but Sire Records decided to support the nine-member band on an extended tour.
Remain in Light was released worldwide on 8 October 1980. Talking Heads and 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 mathematical formula for the split, but the album was released with the credits "David Byrne, Brian Eno, Talking Heads". Frantz, Harrison, and Weymouth disputed Byrne and Eno's attempt to claim sole credits, especially for a process they had partly funded. According to Weymouth, Byrne told Kalman to doctor the credits on Eno's advice. Later editions rectified the error. Remain in Light received its world premiere airing in its entirety on 10 October 1980 on WDFM. It was certified Gold by the Canadian Recording Industry Association
in February 1981 after shipping 50,000 copies, and by Recording Industry Association of America
in September 1985 after shipping 500,000 copies. Over one million copies have been sold worldwide.
Remain in Light contains eight songs that possess a "striking free-associative
feel" according to psychoanalyst Michael A. Brog, in that there is no long-lasting coherent thought process that can be followed in the stream-of-consciousness lyrics. David Gans instructed Byrne to be freer with his lyrical content by advising him that "rational thinking has its limits". The frontman included a bibliography with the album press kit along with a statement that explained how the album was inspired by African mythologies
and rhythms. The release stressed that the major inspiration to the lyrics was Professor John Miller Chernoff's African Rhythm and African Sensibility, which examined the musical enhancement of life in the continent's rural communities. The academic travelled to Ghana in 1970 to study native percussion and wrote about how Africans have complicated conversations through drum patterns. One of the songs, "The Great Curve", exemplifies the African theme by including the line "The world moves on a woman's hips", which Byrne used after reading Professor Robert Farris Thompson
's book African Art in Motion. He additionally studied straight speech, from John Dean
's Watergate testimony to the stories of African American
former slaves.
Like all the other tracks, album opener "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
" borrows from "preaching, shouting and ranting". Byrne rewrote the song title "Don't Worry About the Government" from Talking Heads' debut album, Talking Heads: 77
, into the lyric "Look at the hands of a government man". The expression "And the Heat Goes On", used in the title and repeated in the chorus, is based on a New York Post
headline Eno read in the summer of 1980. The "rhythmical rant" in "Crosseyed and Painless"—"Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are late."—is influenced by old school rap, specifically Kurtis Blow
's "The Breaks
" given to Byrne by Frantz. "Once in a Lifetime" borrows heavily from preachers' diatribes. Some critics have suggested that the song is "a kind of prescient jab at the excesses of the 1980s". Byrne disagreed with the categorisation and commented that its lyrics are meant to be taken literally; he stated, "We're largely unconscious. You know, we operate half awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we haven't really stopped to ask ourselves, 'How did I get here?'."
and punk rock
or New Wave music
. None of the compositions include chord changes and instead rely on the use of different harmonics and notes. "Spidery riffs" and layered tracks of bass and percussion are used extensively throughout the album. The first side contains the more rhythmic songs recorded—"Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)", "Crosseyed and Painless", and "The Great Curve"—which include long instrumental interludes. The last-named track contains extended guitar solos from Adrian Belew.
The second side of Remain in Light features more introspective songs. "Once in a Lifetime" pays homage to early rap
techniques and the music of art rock
band The Velvet Underground
. The track was originally called "Weird Guitar Riff Song" because of its composition. It was conceived as a single riff
before the band added a second, boosted riff over the top of the first. Eno alternated eight bars
of each riff with corresponding bars of its counterpart. "Houses in Motion" incorporates lengthy brass performances from Jon Hassell, while "Listening Wind" features Arabic music elements. The final track on the album, "The Overload," was Talking Heads' attempt to emulate the sound of British post-punk band Joy Division
. The song was made despite no band member having heard the music of Joy Division; rather, it was based on an idea of what the British quartet might sound like based on descriptions in the music press. The track features "tribal-cum-industrial
" beats created primarily by Harrison and Byrne.
." Robert Christgau
, writing in The Village Voice
, described the record as one "in which David Byrne conquers his fear of music in a visionary Afrofunk synthesis—clear-eyed, detached, almost mystically optimistic". Michael Kulp of The Daily Collegian commented that the album deserves the tag "classic" like each of the band's three previous full-length releases, while John Rockwell
, writing in The New York Times
, suggested that it confirmed Talking Heads' position as "America's most venturesome rock band". Sandy Robertson of Sounds
praised the record's innovative nature, while Billboard
wrote, "Just about every LP Talking Heads has released in the last four years has wound up on virtually every critics' best of list. Remain in Light should be no exception."
Allmusic's William Ruhlmann noted that Talking Heads' musical transition, first witnessed in Fear of Music, comes to full fruition in Remain in Light; he stated, "Talking Heads were connecting with an audience ready to follow their musical evolution, and the album was so inventive and influential." In the 1995 Spin
Alternative Record Guide, Eric Weisbard praised Eno's production effort which helped rein in any excessive appropriations of African music by Talking Heads. In 2004, Slant
's Barry Walsh labelled its results as "simply magical" after the band turned rock music into a more global entity in terms of its musical and lyrical scope. In a 2008 review, Sean Fennessey of Vibe concluded, "Talking Heads took African polyrhythms to NYC and made a return trip with elegant, alien post-punk
in tow."
, ahead of The Skids
' The Absolute Game
, and by Melody Maker
, while The New York Times included it in its unnumbered shortlist of the 10 best records issued that year. It figured highly in other end-of-year best album lists, notably at number two, behind The Clash
's London Calling
, by Robert Christgau, and at number six by NME
. It featured at number three—behind London Calling and Bruce Springsteen
's The River—in The Village Voices 1980 Pazz & Jop
critics' poll, which aggregates the votes of hundreds of prominent reviewers.
In 1989, Rolling Stone named Remain in Light as the fourth best album of the decade. In 1993, it was included at number 11 in NMEs list of The 50 Greatest Albums Of The '80s, and at number 68 in the publication's Greatest Albums Of All Time list. In 1997, The Guardian
collated worldwide data from renowned critics, artists, and radio DJs, which placed the record at number 43 in the list of the 100 Best Albums Ever. In 1999, it was included as one of Vibe's 100 Essential Albums Of The 20th Century. In 2002, Pitchfork Media
featured Remain in Light at number two behind Sonic Youth
's Daydream Nation
in its Top 100 Albums Of The 1980s list. In 2003, VH1
named the record at number 88 during its 100 Greatest Albums countdown, while Slant included it in its unnumbered shortlist of 50 Essential Pop Albums. Rolling Stone placed it at number 126 in its November 2003 issue of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
", higher than three other Talking Heads releases. In 2006, Q ranked Remain in Light at number 27 in its list of the 40 Best Albums of the 80s.
Side one
Side two
Expanded CD reissue unfinished outtakes
Talking Heads
Additional musicians
Production
Design
Singles
Non-singles
"—" denotes releases that did not chart.
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
band Talking Heads
Talking Heads
Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...
, released on 8 October 1980 on Sire Records
Sire Records
Sire Records is an American record label, owned by Warner Music Group and distributed through Warner Bros. Records.-Beginnings:The label was founded in 1966 as Sire Productions by Seymour Stein and Richard Gottehrer, each investing ten thousand dollars into the new company. Its early releases as a...
. It was recorded at locations in the Bahamas and the United States between July and August 1980 and was produced
Record producer
A record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
by the quartet's long-time collaborator Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
. The album peaked at number 19 on the Billboard 200
Billboard 200
The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists...
in the US and at number 21 on the UK Albums Chart
UK Albums Chart
The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart...
. Two singles
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
were released from Remain in Light: "Once in a Lifetime
Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song)
"Once in a Lifetime" is a song by New Wave band Talking Heads, released as the first single from their fourth studio album Remain in Light. The song was written by David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth, and produced by Eno...
" and "Houses in Motion
Houses in Motion
"Houses in Motion" is the second and final single from Remain in Light, the fourth studio album from American New Wave band Talking Heads. An alternate mix of the song was released in vinyl form on 5 May 1981 and peaked at number 50 on the UK Singles Chart....
". The record was certified Gold in the US and in Canada during the 1980s.
The members of Talking Heads wanted to make an album that dispelled notions of frontman and chief lyricist David Byrne
David Byrne
David Byrne may refer to:*David Byrne , musician and former Talking Heads frontman**David Byrne , his eponymous album*David Byrne , Irish footballer*David Byrne , English footballer...
leading a back-up band. They decided to experiment with African polyrhythms and, with Eno, recorded the instrumental tracks as a series of samples and loops, a novel idea at the time. Additional musicians were frequently used throughout the studio sessions. The lyric writing process slowed Remain in Lights progress, but was concluded after Byrne drew inspiration from academic literature on Africa. The artwork was crafted with the help of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
's computers and designing company M&Co.. Following the album's completion, Talking Heads expanded to nine members for promotional concerts.
Remain in Light was widely acclaimed by critics. Praise centred on its cohesive merging of disparate genres and sonic experimentation. The record has featured in several publications' lists of the best albums of the 1980s and the best albums of all time. It is often considered Talking Heads' magnum opus
Magnum opus
Magnum opus , from the Latin meaning "great work", refers to the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement of a writer, artist, or composer.-Related terms:Sometimes the term magnum opus is used to refer to simply "a great work" rather than "the...
. In 2006, it was remastered and reissued with the addition of four unfinished outtakes.
Origins
In January 1980, the members of Talking Heads returned to New York City after the tours in support of their 1979 critically acclaimed third album, Fear of MusicFear of Music (album)
Fear of Music is the third studio album by American New Wave band Talking Heads, released on 3 August 1979 on Sire Records. It was recorded at locations in New York City between April and May 1979 and was produced by the quartet and Brian Eno. The album entered the Billboard 200 in the United...
, and decided to take time off to pursue personal interests. Byrne worked with Eno, the record's producer, on an experimental
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
collaboration named My Life in the Bush of Ghosts
My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (album)
The album was recorded entirely with analogue technology, before the advent of digital sequencing and MIDI. The sampled voices were synchronized with the instrumental tracks via trial and error, a practice that was often frustrating, but which also produced several happy accidents.Also according to...
. Jerry Harrison
Jerry Harrison
Jerry Harrison is an American songwriter, musician and producer...
produced an album for soul
Soul music
Soul music is a music genre originating in the United States combining elements of gospel music and rhythm and blues. According to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, soul is "music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of...
singer Nona Hendryx
Nona Hendryx
Nona Hendryx is an American vocalist, producer, songwriter, musician, author, and actress.Hendryx is known for her work as a solo artist as well as for being one-third of the trio Labelle, who had a hit with "Lady Marmalade." Her music has ranged from soul, funk, dance, and R&B to hard rock, art...
at the Sigma Sound Studios
Sigma Sound Studios
Sigma Sound Studios is an American music recording studio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania founded by recording engineer Joseph Tarsia in 1968.Located at 212 N. 12th Street in Philadelphia, it was the second studio in the country to offer 24-track recording and the first in the country to use console...
branch in New York City; the singer and the location were later used during the recording of Remain in Light on the advice of Harrison. Husband and wife Chris Frantz
Chris Frantz
Chris Frantz is an American musician and record producer. He was the drummer for both Talking Heads and the Tom Tom Club.-Career:...
and Tina Weymouth
Tina Weymouth
Martina Michèle "Tina" Weymouth is an American musician, best known as a founding member and bassist of the New Wave group Talking Heads and its side project Tom Tom Club .-Profile:Weymouth is of French heritage on her mother's side. Weymouth was a cheerleader in high school...
discussed the possibility of leaving the band after the latter suggested that Byrne's level of control was excessive. Frantz was not open to the idea of ending Talking Heads, and the two decided to take a long vacation in the Caribbean to ponder the state of the band and their marriage. During the trip, the couple became involved in Haitian Vodou religious ceremonies and practised with several types of native percussion instruments. In Jamaica, they socialised with the famous reggae
Reggae
Reggae is a music genre first developed in Jamaica in the late 1960s. While sometimes used in a broader sense to refer to most types of Jamaican music, the term reggae more properly denotes a particular music style that originated following on the development of ska and rocksteady.Reggae is based...
rhythm section
Rhythm section
A rhythm section is a collection of musicians who make up a section of instruments which provides the accompaniment section of the music, giving the music its rhythmic texture and pulse, also serving as a rhythmic reference for the rest of the band...
of Sly and Robbie
Sly and Robbie
Sly and Robbie is the prolific Jamaican rhythm section and production team of drummer Sly Dunbar and bassist Robbie Shakespeare who joined in the mid 1970s after having established themselves separately in Jamaica as professional musicians...
.
Frantz and Weymouth ended their holiday by purchasing an apartment above Compass Point Studios
Compass Point Studios
Compass Point Studios were founded in 1977 by Chris Blackwell, the owner of Island Records.In the late 1970s and mid-1980s, many musical artists from across the world came to the Bahamas to record music at its facilities. Many producers, including Chris Blackwell himself, used the studio to produce...
in Nassau
Nassau, Bahamas
Nassau is the capital, largest city, and commercial centre of the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. The city has a population of 248,948 , 70 percent of the entire population of The Bahamas...
, the Bahamas, where the band had recorded their second album More Songs About Buildings and Food
More Songs about Buildings and Food
More Songs About Buildings and Food is Talking Heads' second album, the first of a string of three co-produced by Brian Eno. The album was significantly more popular than their first, Talking Heads: 77...
. Byrne joined the duo and Harrison there in the spring of 1980. The band members realised that it had been solely up to Byrne to bear the creative burden of crafting songs even though the tracks were performed as a quartet. The conception of Remain in Light occurred partly because they tired of the notion of a singer leading a back-up band; the ideal they aimed for, according to Byrne, was "sacrificing our egos for mutual cooperation". The frontman additionally wanted to escape "the psychological paranoia and personal torment" of what he had been writing and feeling in 1970s New York City. Instead of the band writing music to Byrne's lyrics, Talking Heads performed instrumental jam sessions without words using the Fear of Music song "I Zimbra
I Zimbra
"I Zimbra" is a song by American New Wave band Talking Heads, released as the second single from their 1979 album Fear of Music.The song's lyrics are an adaptation of Dadaist Hugo Ball's poem "Gadji beri bimba."-Lyrics:The lyrics contain these lines:...
" as a starting point.
Eno arrived in the Bahamas three weeks after Byrne and was at first reluctant to work with the band again after collaborating on the previous two full-length releases. He changed his mind after hearing the instrumental demo tapes and noted, "I absolutely love the direction you're going in." Both parties decided to experiment with the communal African way of making music, in which individual parts mesh as polyrhythms to create a cohesive whole. Afrodisiac, the 1973 Afrobeat
Afrobeat
Afrobeat is a combination of traditional Yoruba music, jazz, highlife, funk and chanted vocals, fused with percussion and vocal styles, popularised in Africa in the 1970s. Its main creator was the Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and bandleader Fela Kuti, who gave it its name, who used it to...
record from Nigerian musician Fela Kuti
Fela Kuti
Fela Anikulapo Kuti , or simply Fela , was a Nigerian multi-instrumentalist musician and composer, pioneer of Afrobeat music, human rights activist, and political maverick.-Biography:...
, became the template for the album. Weymouth has commented that the advent of the 1980s marked the beginnings of hip-hop music, which made Talking Heads realise that the musical landscape was changing. Before the studio sessions, long-time friend David Gans
David Gans (musician)
David Gans, in Los Angeles, California, is an American musician, songwriter, and music journalist. He is a guitarist, and is known for incisive, literate songwriting. He is also noted for his music loop work, often creating spontaneous compositions in performance...
instructed the band members that "the things one doesn’t intend are the seeds for a more interesting future". He encouraged them to experiment and improvise when recording and to utilise "mistakes".
Recording and production
Recording sessions started at Compass Point Studios in July 1980. The album's creation required the use of additional musicians, particularly extra percussionists. Talking Heads used the working titleWorking title
A working title, sometimes called a production title, is the temporary name of a product or project used during its development, usually used in filmmaking, television production, novel, video game, or music album.-Purpose:...
Melody Attack throughout the studio process after watching a Japanese game show of the same name. Harrison has commented that the ambition was to blend rock and African genres, rather than simply imitate African music. Eno's production techniques and personal approach were key to the record's conception. The process was geared to promote the expression of instinct and spontaneity without overtly focusing on the sound of the final product. Sections and instrumentals were recorded one at a time in a discontinuous process. Samples and loops played a key part at a time when computer programs could not yet adequately perform such functions. The band's performances and jam sessions acted as sampling and looping mechanisms. Eno has compared the creative process to "looking out to the world and saying, 'What a fantastic place we live in. Let's celebrate it.'"
After a few sessions in the Bahamas, engineer Rhett Davies
Rhett Davies
Rhett Davies is an English record producer and engineer.Rhett Davies' father was trumpet player Ray Davies; they are no relation to Ray Davies of The Kinks. Davies became a studio engineer at Island Records studios in the early 1970s, and his first session was the recording process for Brian Eno's...
left following an argument with the producer over the fast speed of recording. Steven Stanley
Steven Stanley
Steven J. C. Stanley , is a Jamaican audio engineer, record producer and keyboardist who has worked in the reggae, dub and rock music genres since 1975, most notably with Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club and Black Uhuru....
, who since the age of 17 had engineered for musicians such as Bob Marley
Bob Marley
Robert Nesta "Bob" Marley, OM was a Jamaican singer-songwriter and musician. He was the rhythm guitarist and lead singer for the ska, rocksteady and reggae band Bob Marley & The Wailers...
, stepped in to cover the workload. He is credited by Frantz for helping create the future single "Once in a Lifetime". The album was crafted using a Lexicon
Lexicon (company)
Lexicon is an American audio equipment manufacturing company founded in 1971 and owned by Harman International Industries. Lexicon's roots began in 1969 with the founding of American Data Sciences by MIT professor Dr...
224 digital studio reverb effects unit obtained by engineer and mixer
Audio mixing (recorded music)
In audio recording, audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated and effects such as reverb may...
Dave Jerden
Dave Jerden
Dave Jerden is an American record producer, engineer and mixer who mostly works with artists in the alternative rock, punk rock and metal genres....
; the machine was one of the first of its kind and was able to simulate environments such as chambers and rooms through interchangeable programs. Like Davies, Jerden was unhappy at the quick pace Eno wanted to record sonically complicated compositions, but did not complain. The basic tracks focused wholly on rhythms and were all performed in a minimalist method using only one chord
Chord (music)
A chord in music is any harmonic set of two–three or more notes that is heard as if sounding simultaneously. These need not actually be played together: arpeggios and broken chords may for many practical and theoretical purposes be understood as chords...
. Each section was recorded as a long loop to enable the creation of compositions through the positioning or merging loops in different ways.
The tracks made Byrne rethink his vocal style and he tried singing to the instrumental songs, but sounded "stilted". Few vocal sections were recorded in the Bahamas. The writing process for the lyrics occurred when the band returned to the US and was split between New York City and California. Harrison booked Talking Heads into Sigma Sound, which focused primarily on R&B music, after convincing the owners that the band's work could bring them a new type of clientele. In New York City, Byrne struggled with writer's block
Writer's block
Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing as a profession, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work. The condition varies widely in intensity. It can be trivial, a temporary difficulty in dealing with the task at hand. At the other extreme, some "blocked"...
. Harrison and Eno spent their time tweaking the compositions recorded in the Bahamas, while Frantz and Weymouth often did not show up at the studio. Doubts began to surface about whether the album would be completed. The recording sessions only built up pace after the recruitment of guitarist Adrian Belew
Adrian Belew
Adrian Belew is an American guitarist, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and record producer...
at the request of Byrne, Harrison, and Eno. He was advised to add guitar solos
Guitar solo
In popular music, a guitar solo is a melodic passage, section, or entire piece of music written for an electric guitar or an acoustic guitar. Guitar solos, which often contain varying degrees of improvisation, are used in many styles of popular music such as blues, jazz, rock and metal styles such...
to the Compass Point tracks by using his distinctive style of running instruments through a Roland
Roland Corporation
is a Japanese manufacturer of electronic musical instruments, electronic equipment and software. It was founded by Ikutaro Kakehashi in Osaka on April 18, 1972, with ¥33 million in capital. In 2005 Roland's headquarters relocated to Hamamatsu in Shizuoka Prefecture. Today it has factories in Japan,...
guitar synthesiser.
Byrne recorded all the tracks, as they were after Belew had performed, in a cassette and looked to Africa to break his writer's block. He realised that, when African musicians forget words, they often improvise and make new ones up. The lyricist used a portable tape recorder and tried to create onomatopoeic rhymes in the style of Eno, who believed that lyrics were never the centre of a song's meaning. Byrne continuously listened to his recorded scatting until convinced that he was no longer "hearing nonsense". After the frontman was satisfied, Harrison invited Nona Hendryx to Sigma Sound to record backing vocals for the album. She was advised extensively on her vocal delivery by Byrne, Frantz, and Weymouth, and often sang in a trio with Byrne and Eno. The voice sessions were followed by the overdubbing
Overdubbing
Overdubbing is a technique used by recording studios to add a supplementary recorded sound to a previously recorded performance....
process. Brass player Jon Hassell
Jon Hassell
Jon Hassell is an American trumpet player and composer. He is known for his influence in the world music scene and his unusual electronic manipulation of the trumpet sound.-Life and career:...
, who had been working on parts of My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, was hired to perform trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
and horn
Horn (instrument)
The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
sections. In August 1980, half of the album was mixed by Eno and engineer John Potoker in New York City with the assistance of Harrison, while the other half was mixed by Byrne and Jerden at Eldorado Studios
Eldorado Recording Studios
Eldorado Recording Studios is a recording studio in Burbank, California originally established in 1954 at the corner of Hollywood and Vine as a workshop for Johnny Otis...
in Los Angeles.
Packaging and title
The cover art was conceived by Weymouth and Frantz with the help of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Walter BenderWalter Bender
Walter Bender is technologist and researcher who has made important contributions in the field of electronic publishing, media, and technology for learning. Bender is on leave as a Senior Research Scientist at the MIT Media Lab which he led as executive director between 2000 and 2006...
and his MIT Media Lab
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a laboratory of MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Devoted to research projects at the convergence of design, multimedia and technology, the Media Lab has been widely popularized since the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a...
team. Using Melody Attack as inspiration, the couple created a collage of red warplanes flying in formation over the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
. The planes are an artistic depiction of Grumman Avenger planes in honour of Weymouth's father who was a US Navy Admiral
Admiral
Admiral is the rank, or part of the name of the ranks, of the highest naval officers. It is usually considered a full admiral and above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet . It is usually abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"...
. The idea for the back cover included simple portraits of the band members. Weymouth attended MIT regularly during the summer of 1980 and worked with Bender's colleague, Scott Fisher
Scott Fisher (technologist)
Scott Fisher is Professor and Chair of the Interactive Media Division in the USC School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, and a Fellow of the Annenberg Center for Communication there...
, on the computer renditions of the ideas. The process was tortuous because computer power was limited in the early 1980s and the mainframe
Mainframe computer
Mainframes are powerful computers used primarily by corporate and governmental organizations for critical applications, bulk data processing such as census, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and financial transaction processing.The term originally referred to the...
alone took up several rooms. Weymouth and Fisher shared a passion for masks and used the concept to experiment with the portraits. The faces were blotted out with blocks of red colour. Weymouth considered superimposing Eno's face on top of all four portraits to insinuate his egotism—the producer wanted to be on the cover art together with Talking Heads—but decided against it in the end.
The rest of the artwork and the liner notes
Liner notes
Liner notes are the writings found in booklets which come inserted into the compact disc jewel case or the equivalent packaging for vinyl records and cassettes.-Origin:...
were crafted by the graphic design
Graphic design
Graphic design is a creative process – most often involving a client and a designer and usually completed in conjunction with producers of form – undertaken in order to convey a specific message to a targeted audience...
er Tibor Kalman
Tibor Kalman
Tibor Kalman was an influential American graphic designer of Hungarian origin, well-known for his work as editor-in-chief of Colors magazine....
and his company M&Co. Kalman was a fervent critic of formalism
Formalism (art)
In art theory, formalism is the concept that a work's artistic value is entirely determined by its form--the way it is made, its purely visual aspects, and its medium. Formalism emphasizes compositional elements such as color, line, shape and texture rather than realism, context, and content...
and professional design in art and advertisements. He offered his services for free to create publicity, and discussed using unconventional materials such as sandpaper
Sandpaper
Sandpaper, also known as glasspaper, is a heavy paper with abrasive material attached to its surface.Sandpaper is part of the "coated abrasives" family of abrasive products. It is used to remove small amounts of material from surfaces, either to make them smoother , to remove a layer of material...
and velour
Velour
Velour or velours is a plush, knitted fabric or textile. It is usually made from cotton but can also be made from synthetic materials such as polyester. Velour is used in a wide variety of applications, including clothing and upholstery....
for the LP sleeve. Weymouth, who was sceptical of hiring a designing firm, vetoed Kalman's ideas and held firm on the MIT computerised images. The designing process made the band members realise that the title Melody Attack was "too flippant" for the music recorded, and they adopted Remain in Light instead. Byrne has noted, "Besides not being all that melodic, the music had something to say that at the time seemed new, transcendent, and maybe even revolutionary, at least for funk rock songs." The image of the warplanes was relegated to the back of the sleeve and the doctored portraits became the front cover. Kalman later suggested that the planes were not removed altogether because they seemed appropriate during the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979–1981.
Weymouth advised Kalman that she wanted simple typography
Typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make language visible. The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size, line length, leading , adjusting the spaces between groups of letters and adjusting the space between pairs of letters...
in a bold sans serif font. M&Co. followed the instructions and came up with the idea of inverting the "A"s in "TALKING HEADS". Weymouth and Frantz decided to use the joint credit acronym C/T for the artwork, while Bender and Fisher used initials and code names because the project was not an official MIT venture. The design credits read "HCL, JPT, DDD, WALTER GP, PAUL, C/T". The final mass-produced version of Remain in Light boasted one of the first computer-designed record jackets in the history of music. Psychoanalyst Michael A. Brog has called its front cover a "disarming image, which suggests both splitting and obliteration of identity" and which introduces the listener to the album's recurring theme of "identity disturbance"; he states, "The image is in bleak contrast to the title with the obscured images of the band members unable to 'remain in light'."
Promotion and release
Funkadelic
Funkadelic was an American band most prominent during the 1970s. The band and its sister act Parliament, both led by George Clinton, began the funk music culture of that decade.-History:...
keyboardist
Keyboardist
A keyboardist is a musician who plays keyboard instruments. Until the early 1960s musicians who played keyboards were generally classified as either pianists or organists. Since the mid-1960s, a plethora of new musical instruments with keyboards have come into common usage, requiring a more...
Bernie Worrell
Bernie Worrell
George Bernard "Bernie" Worrell, Jr. is an American keyboardist and composer best known as a founding member of Parliament-Funkadelic and for his work with Talking Heads. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, inducted in 1997 with fifteen other members of Parliament-Funkadelic...
, bassist
Bassist
A bass player, or bassist is a musician who plays a bass instrument such as a double bass, bass guitar, keyboard bass or a low brass instrument such as a tuba or sousaphone. Different musical genres tend to be associated with one or more of these instruments...
Busta "Cherry" Jones, Ashford & Simpson
Ashford & Simpson
Nickolas Ashford , and Valerie Simpson , were a husband and wife songwriting/production team and recording artists....
percussionist Steven Scales, and backing vocalist Dolette MacDonald. The larger group performed sound checks in Frantz and Weymouth's loft by following the rhythms established by Worrell, who had studied at the New England Conservatory and Juilliard School
Juilliard School
The Juilliard School, located at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, United States, is a performing arts conservatory which was established in 1905...
. Their first appearance was on 23 August 1980 at the Heatwave festival
Heatwave (festival)
Heatwave was a rock festival August 23, 1980, outside of Toronto at Mosport Park, Bowmanville, Ontario. The slogans used to promote the show were variously the "Punk Woodstock", the "New Wave Woodstock", or "The 1980s Big Beat Rock and Roll Party"....
in Canada in front of 70,000 people; Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....
called the band's new music a "rock-funk sound with dramatic, near show-stopping force". On 27 August, the expanded Talking Heads performed a showcase of tracks to an audience of 125,000 at the Wollman Rink
Wollman Rink
Wollman Skating Rink is a public ice rink in the southern part of Central Park, Manhattan, New York City. The rink was opened in 1949 with funds donated by Kate Wollman who donated $600,000 for the rink to commemorate her entire family from Leavenworth, Kansas)...
in New York City's Central Park
Central Park
Central Park is a public park in the center of Manhattan in New York City, United States. The park initially opened in 1857, on of city-owned land. In 1858, Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux won a design competition to improve and expand the park with a plan they entitled the Greensward Plan...
. The Canada and New York gigs were the only ones initially planned, but Sire Records decided to support the nine-member band on an extended tour.
Remain in Light was released worldwide on 8 October 1980. Talking Heads and 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 mathematical formula for the split, but the album was released with the credits "David Byrne, Brian Eno, Talking Heads". Frantz, Harrison, and Weymouth disputed Byrne and Eno's attempt to claim sole credits, especially for a process they had partly funded. According to Weymouth, Byrne told Kalman to doctor the credits on Eno's advice. Later editions rectified the error. Remain in Light received its world premiere airing in its entirety on 10 October 1980 on WDFM. It was certified Gold by the Canadian Recording Industry Association
Canadian Recording Industry Association
Music Canada is a Toronto-based, non-profit trade organization that was founded 9 April 1963 to represent the interests of companies that record, artists, manufacture, production, promotion and distribution of music in Canada...
in February 1981 after shipping 50,000 copies, and by Recording Industry Association of America
Recording Industry Association of America
The Recording Industry Association of America is a trade organization that represents the recording industry distributors in the United States...
in September 1985 after shipping 500,000 copies. Over one million copies have been sold worldwide.
Lyrics
Free association (psychology)
Free association is a technique used in psychoanalysis which was originally devised by Sigmund Freud out of the hypnotic method of his mentor and coworker, Josef Breuer....
feel" according to psychoanalyst Michael A. Brog, in that there is no long-lasting coherent thought process that can be followed in the stream-of-consciousness lyrics. David Gans instructed Byrne to be freer with his lyrical content by advising him that "rational thinking has its limits". The frontman included a bibliography with the album press kit along with a statement that explained how the album was inspired by African mythologies
Mythologies
Mythologies is a book by Roland Barthes, published in 1957. It is a collection of essays taken from Les Lettres nouvelles, examining the tendency of contemporary social value systems to create modern myths...
and rhythms. The release stressed that the major inspiration to the lyrics was Professor John Miller Chernoff's African Rhythm and African Sensibility, which examined the musical enhancement of life in the continent's rural communities. The academic travelled to Ghana in 1970 to study native percussion and wrote about how Africans have complicated conversations through drum patterns. One of the songs, "The Great Curve", exemplifies the African theme by including the line "The world moves on a woman's hips", which Byrne used after reading Professor Robert Farris Thompson
Robert Farris Thompson
Robert Farris Thompson is the Colonel John Trumbull Professor of the History of Art at Yale University....
's book African Art in Motion. He additionally studied straight speech, from John Dean
John Dean
John Wesley Dean III is an American lawyer who served as White House Counsel to United States President Richard Nixon from July 1970 until April 1973. In this position, he became deeply involved in events leading up to the Watergate burglaries and the subsequent Watergate scandal cover-up...
's Watergate testimony to the stories of African American
African American
African Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
former slaves.
Like all the other tracks, album opener "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
"Born Under Punches " is the opening track to the acclaimed Talking Heads album Remain in Light. The track has a prominent bassline and sets the funk tone of the album...
" borrows from "preaching, shouting and ranting". Byrne rewrote the song title "Don't Worry About the Government" from Talking Heads' debut album, Talking Heads: 77
Talking Heads: 77
Talking Heads: 77 is the debut album by Talking Heads. It peaked at #97 in the Billboard Pop Albums chart and the single "Psycho Killer" made it to #92. In 2003, the album was ranked #290 on Rolling Stone magazine's The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list...
, into the lyric "Look at the hands of a government man". The expression "And the Heat Goes On", used in the title and repeated in the chorus, is based on a New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
headline Eno read in the summer of 1980. The "rhythmical rant" in "Crosseyed and Painless"—"Facts are simple and facts are straight. Facts are lazy and facts are late."—is influenced by old school rap, specifically Kurtis Blow
Kurtis Blow
Kurt Walker , better known by his stage name Kurtis Blow, is an American rapper and record producer. He is one of the first commercially successful rappers and the first to sign with a major record label...
's "The Breaks
The Breaks
The Breaks is an American 1999 comedy film written by and starring Mitch Mullany and directed by Eric Meza. The plot involves a day in the life of Derrick King, an Irish kid raised by a black family in Los Angeles, as he is kicked out of his house and suffers various other mishaps before eventually...
" given to Byrne by Frantz. "Once in a Lifetime" borrows heavily from preachers' diatribes. Some critics have suggested that the song is "a kind of prescient jab at the excesses of the 1980s". Byrne disagreed with the categorisation and commented that its lyrics are meant to be taken literally; he stated, "We're largely unconscious. You know, we operate half awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we haven't really stopped to ask ourselves, 'How did I get here?'."
Music
Byrne has described the album's final mix as a "spiritual" piece of work, "joyous and ecstatic and yet it's serious"; he has pointed out that, in the end, there was "less Africanism in Remain in Light that we implied ... but the African ideas were far more important to get across than specific rhythms". According to Eno, the record uniquely blends funkFunk
Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid-late 1960s when African American musicians blended soul music, jazz and R&B into a rhythmic, danceable new form of music. Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground...
and punk rock
Punk rock
Punk rock is a rock music genre that developed between 1974 and 1976 in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Rooted in garage rock and other forms of what is now known as protopunk music, punk rock bands eschewed perceived excesses of mainstream 1970s rock...
or New Wave music
New Wave music
New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...
. None of the compositions include chord changes and instead rely on the use of different harmonics and notes. "Spidery riffs" and layered tracks of bass and percussion are used extensively throughout the album. The first side contains the more rhythmic songs recorded—"Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)", "Crosseyed and Painless", and "The Great Curve"—which include long instrumental interludes. The last-named track contains extended guitar solos from Adrian Belew.
The second side of Remain in Light features more introspective songs. "Once in a Lifetime" pays homage to early rap
Rap
Rap may refer to:*Rapping, performance in which rhyming lyrics are used, with or without musical accompaniment ; while an MC performs spoken verses in time to a beat/ melody**Hip hop subculture**Hip hop music...
techniques and the music of art rock
Art rock
Art rock is a subgenre of rock music that originated in the United Kingdom in the 1960s, with influences from art, avant-garde, and classical music. The first usage of the term, according to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, was in 1968. Influenced by the work of The Beatles, most notably their Sgt...
band The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City. First active from 1964 to 1973, their best-known members were Lou Reed and John Cale, who both went on to find success as solo artists. Although experiencing little commercial success while together, the band is often cited...
. The track was originally called "Weird Guitar Riff Song" because of its composition. It was conceived as a single riff
RIFF
The Resource Interchange File Format is a generic file container format for storing data in tagged chunks. It is primarily used to store multimedia such as sound and video, though it may also be used to store any arbitrary data....
before the band added a second, boosted riff over the top of the first. Eno alternated eight bars
Bar (music)
In musical notation, a bar is a segment of time defined by a given number of beats of a given duration. Typically, a piece consists of several bars of the same length, and in modern musical notation the number of beats in each bar is specified at the beginning of the score by the top number of a...
of each riff with corresponding bars of its counterpart. "Houses in Motion" incorporates lengthy brass performances from Jon Hassell, while "Listening Wind" features Arabic music elements. The final track on the album, "The Overload," was Talking Heads' attempt to emulate the sound of British post-punk band Joy Division
Joy Division
Joy Division were an English rock band formed in 1976 in Salford, Greater Manchester. Originally named Warsaw, the band primarily consisted of Ian Curtis , Bernard Sumner , Peter Hook and Stephen Morris .Joy Division rapidly evolved from their initial punk rock influences...
. The song was made despite no band member having heard the music of Joy Division; rather, it was based on an idea of what the British quartet might sound like based on descriptions in the music press. The track features "tribal-cum-industrial
Industrial music
Industrial music is a style of experimental music that draws on transgressive and provocative themes. The term was coined in the mid-1970s with the founding of Industrial Records by the band Throbbing Gristle, and the creation of the slogan "industrial music for industrial people". In general, the...
" beats created primarily by Harrison and Byrne.
Reviews
The album has attained widespread acclaim from media outlets since its release. Ken Tucker of Rolling Stone explained that it was a brave and absorbing attempt to locate a common ground in the early 1980s divergent and often hostile musical genres; he concluded, "Remain in Light yields scary, funny music to which you can dance and think, think and dance, dance and think, ad infinitumAd infinitum
Ad infinitum is a Latin phrase meaning "to infinity."In context, it usually means "continue forever, without limit" and thus can be used to describe a non-terminating process, a non-terminating repeating process, or a set of instructions to be repeated "forever," among other uses...
." Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
, writing in The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, described the record as one "in which David Byrne conquers his fear of music in a visionary Afrofunk synthesis—clear-eyed, detached, almost mystically optimistic". Michael Kulp of The Daily Collegian commented that the album deserves the tag "classic" like each of the band's three previous full-length releases, while John Rockwell
John Rockwell
John Rockwell is a music critic, editor, and dance critic. He studied at Phillips Academy, Harvard, the University of Munich, and the University of California, Berkeley, earning a Ph.D. in German culture....
, writing in The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, suggested that it confirmed Talking Heads' position as "America's most venturesome rock band". Sandy Robertson of Sounds
Sounds (magazine)
Sounds was a long-term British music paper, published weekly from 10 October 1970 – 6 April 1991. It was produced by Spotlight Publications , which was set up by Jack Hutton and Peter Wilkinson, who left "Melody Maker" to start their own company...
praised the record's innovative nature, while Billboard
Billboard (magazine)
Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis...
wrote, "Just about every LP Talking Heads has released in the last four years has wound up on virtually every critics' best of list. Remain in Light should be no exception."
Allmusic's William Ruhlmann noted that Talking Heads' musical transition, first witnessed in Fear of Music, comes to full fruition in Remain in Light; he stated, "Talking Heads were connecting with an audience ready to follow their musical evolution, and the album was so inventive and influential." In the 1995 Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...
Alternative Record Guide, Eric Weisbard praised Eno's production effort which helped rein in any excessive appropriations of African music by Talking Heads. In 2004, Slant
Slant Magazine
Slant Magazine is an online publication that features reviews of movies, music, TV, DVDs, theater, and video games, as well as interviews with actors, directors, and musicians. The site covers various film festivals like the New York Film Festival.- History :...
's Barry Walsh labelled its results as "simply magical" after the band turned rock music into a more global entity in terms of its musical and lyrical scope. In a 2008 review, Sean Fennessey of Vibe concluded, "Talking Heads took African polyrhythms to NYC and made a return trip with elegant, alien post-punk
Post-punk
Post-punk is a rock music movement with its roots in the late 1970s, following on the heels of the initial punk rock explosion of the mid-1970s. The genre retains its roots in the punk movement but is more introverted, complex and experimental...
in tow."
Accolades
Remain in Light was named the best album of 1980 by SoundsSounds (magazine)
Sounds was a long-term British music paper, published weekly from 10 October 1970 – 6 April 1991. It was produced by Spotlight Publications , which was set up by Jack Hutton and Peter Wilkinson, who left "Melody Maker" to start their own company...
, ahead of The Skids
The Skids
Skids were an art-punk/punk rock and new wave band from Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, founded in 1977 by Stuart Adamson , William Simpson , Thomas Kellichan and Richard Jobson...
' The Absolute Game
The Absolute Game
-Strength Through Joy:All tracks composed by Skids.-2008 re-release:All tracks composed by Skids unless indicated otherwise.-Personnel:* Richard Jobson — vocals / guitar...
, and by Melody Maker
Melody Maker
Melody Maker, published in the United Kingdom, was, according to its publisher IPC Media, the world's oldest weekly music newspaper. It was founded in 1926 as a magazine targeted at musicians; in 2000 it was merged into "long-standing rival" New Musical Express.-1950s–1960s:Originally the Melody...
, while The New York Times included it in its unnumbered shortlist of the 10 best records issued that year. It figured highly in other end-of-year best album lists, notably at number two, behind The Clash
The Clash
The Clash were an English punk rock band that formed in 1976 as part of the original wave of British punk. Along with punk, their music incorporated elements of reggae, ska, dub, funk, rap, dance, and rockabilly...
's London Calling
London Calling
London Calling is the third studio album by the English punk rock band The Clash. It was released in the United Kingdom on 14 December 1979 through CBS Records, and in the United States in January 1980 through Epic Records...
, by Robert Christgau, and at number six by NME
NME
The New Musical Express is a popular music publication in the United Kingdom, published weekly since March 1952. It started as a music newspaper, and gradually moved toward a magazine format during the 1980s, changing from newsprint in 1998. It was the first British paper to include a singles...
. It featured at number three—behind London Calling and Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen , nicknamed "The Boss," is an American singer-songwriter who records and tours with the E Street Band...
's The River—in The Village Voices 1980 Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop
The Pazz & Jop critics' poll is a poll of music critics run by The Village Voice newspaper. It is compiled every year from the top ten lists of hundreds of music critics...
critics' poll, which aggregates the votes of hundreds of prominent reviewers.
In 1989, Rolling Stone named Remain in Light as the fourth best album of the decade. In 1993, it was included at number 11 in NMEs list of The 50 Greatest Albums Of The '80s, and at number 68 in the publication's Greatest Albums Of All Time list. In 1997, The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
collated worldwide data from renowned critics, artists, and radio DJs, which placed the record at number 43 in the list of the 100 Best Albums Ever. In 1999, it was included as one of Vibe's 100 Essential Albums Of The 20th Century. In 2002, Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...
featured Remain in Light at number two behind Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth
Sonic Youth is an American alternative rock band from New York City, formed in 1981. The current lineup consists of Thurston Moore , Kim Gordon , Lee Ranaldo , Steve Shelley , and Mark Ibold .In their early career, Sonic Youth was associated with the No Wave art and music scene in New York City...
's Daydream Nation
Daydream Nation
Daydream Nation is the fifth studio album by the American alternative rock band Sonic Youth. It was released in October 1988 by Enigma Records in the United States, and by Blast First in the United Kingdom....
in its Top 100 Albums Of The 1980s list. In 2003, VH1
VH1
VH1 or Vh1 is an American cable television network based in New York City. Launched on January 1, 1985 in the old space of Turner Broadcasting's short-lived Cable Music Channel, the original purpose of the channel was to build on the success of MTV by playing music videos, but targeting a slightly...
named the record at number 88 during its 100 Greatest Albums countdown, while Slant included it in its unnumbered shortlist of 50 Essential Pop Albums. Rolling Stone placed it at number 126 in its November 2003 issue of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time
"The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time" is the title of a 2003 special issue of American magazine Rolling Stone, and a related book published in 2005.Related news articles:...
", higher than three other Talking Heads releases. In 2006, Q ranked Remain in Light at number 27 in its list of the 40 Best Albums of the 80s.
Track listing
All songs written and composed by Talking Heads and Brian Eno.Side one
Side two
Expanded CD reissue unfinished outtakes
- The remastered reissue was produced by Andy ZaxAndy ZaxAndy Zax is a music historian and producer of CD boxed sets and reissues by Talking Heads, Rod Stewart, Echo & the Bunnymen, Television, Little Richard, Fats Domino, Judee Sill, John Cale, Nico, The Neon Philharmonic, Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, The Sisters of Mercy,...
with the help of Talking Heads. - The DVD portion of the European reissue contains videos of the band performing "Crosseyed and Painless" and "Once in a Lifetime" on German music show Rockpop in 1980.
Personnel
Those involved in the making of Remain in Light are:Talking Heads
- David Byrne – lead vocalsSingingSinging is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
, guitarGuitarThe guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...
s, bass guitarBass guitarThe bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....
, keyboardsKeyboard instrumentA keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
, percussion, vocal arrangements - Jerry Harrison – guitars, keyboards, backing vocalsBacking vocalistA backing vocalist or backing singer is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists...
- Tina Weymouth – bass guitar, keyboards, percussion, backing vocals
- Chris Frantz – drumsDrum kitA drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....
, percussion, keyboards, backing vocals
Additional musicians
- Brian Eno – bass guitar, keyboards, percussion, backing vocals, vocal arrangements
- Nona Hendryx – backing vocals
- Adrian Belew – guitar
- Robert Palmer – percussion
- Jose Rossy – percussion
- Jon Hassell – trumpets, hornsHorn (instrument)The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
Production
- Brian Eno – producerRecord producerA record producer is an individual working within the music industry, whose job is to oversee and manage the recording of an artist's music...
, mixingAudio mixing (recorded music)In audio recording, audio mixing is the process by which multiple recorded sounds are combined into one or more channels, most commonly two-channel stereo. In the process, the source signals' level, frequency content, dynamics, and panoramic position are manipulated and effects such as reverb may... - Dave Jerden – engineer, mixing
- John Potoker – additional engineering, mixing
- Rhett Davies – additional engineering
- Jack Nuber – additional engineering
- Steven Stanley – additional engineering
- Kendall Stubbs – additional engineering
- David Byrne – mixing
- Greg Calbi – masteringAudio masteringMastering, a form of audio post-production, is the process of preparing and transferring recorded audio from a source containing the final mix to a data storage device ; the source from which all copies will be produced...
Design
- Tina Weymouth – cover artCover artCover art is the illustration or photograph on the outside of a published product such as a book , magazine, comic book, video game , DVD, CD, videotape, or music album. The art has a primarily commercial function, i.e...
- Chris Frantz – cover art
- Walter Bender – cover art assistant
- Scott Fisher – cover art assistant
- Tibor Kalman – artwork
- Carol Bokuniewicz – artwork
- MIT Architecture Machine Group – computer rendering
Chart positions
Album| Chart (1980–1981) | Peak |
|---|---|
| Canadian Albums Chart Canadian Albums Chart The Canadian Albums Chart is the official album sales chart in Canada. It is compiled every Wednesday by U.S.-based music sales tracking company Nielsen Soundscan, and published every Thursday by Jam! Canoe and Billboard, along with its sister charts the Canadian Singles Chart and the Canadian BDS... |
6 |
| New Zealand Albums Chart Recording Industry Association of New Zealand The Recording Industry Association of New Zealand is a non-profit trade association of record producers, distributors and recording artists who sell music in New Zealand... |
8 |
| Norwegian Albums Chart VG-lista VG-listen is a Norwegian record chart. It is weekly presented in the newspaper VG and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation program Topp 20. It is considered the primary Norwegian record chart, charting albums and singles from countries and continent around the world. The data is collected by... |
28 |
| Swedish Albums Chart Sverigetopplistan Sverigetopplistan, earlier known as Topplistan and Hitlistan and other names, is since October 2007 the Swedish national record chart, based on sales data from Swedish Recording Industry Association .... |
26 |
| UK Albums Chart UK Albums Chart The UK Albums Chart is a list of albums ranked by physical and digital sales in the United Kingdom. It is compiled every week by The Official Charts Company and broadcast on a Sunday on BBC Radio 1 , and published in Music Week magazine and on the OCC website .To qualify for the UK albums chart... |
21 |
| US Billboard 200 Billboard 200 The Billboard 200 is a ranking of the 200 highest-selling music albums and EPs in the United States, published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists... |
19 |
Singles
| Song | Peak | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| CAN Canadian Singles Chart The Canadian Singles Chart is currently compiled by the U.S.-based music sales tracking company, Nielsen SoundScan . The chart is compiled every Wednesday, and is published by Jam! Canoe on Thursdays.... |
UK UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... |
US Hot 100 Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday... |
|
| "Once in a Lifetime Once in a Lifetime (Talking Heads song) "Once in a Lifetime" is a song by New Wave band Talking Heads, released as the first single from their fourth studio album Remain in Light. The song was written by David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth, and produced by Eno... " |
28 | 14 | 103 |
| "Houses in Motion Houses in Motion "Houses in Motion" is the second and final single from Remain in Light, the fourth studio album from American New Wave band Talking Heads. An alternate mix of the song was released in vinyl form on 5 May 1981 and peaked at number 50 on the UK Singles Chart.... " |
— | 50 | — |
Non-singles
| Song | Peak | |
|---|---|---|
| US Hot 100 Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday... |
US Club Hot Dance Club Play The Hot Dance Club Songs chart is a weekly national survey of the songs that are most popular in U.S. dance clubs... |
|
| "Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) "Born Under Punches " is the opening track to the acclaimed Talking Heads album Remain in Light. The track has a prominent bassline and sets the funk tone of the album... " / "Crosseyed and Painless" / "Once in a Lifetime" |
— | 20 |
"—" denotes releases that did not chart.