David byrne talking heads biography sample

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Byrne released two anthologies of Cuban music: Cuba Classics and Cuba Classics 2: Dancing with the Enemy.

Byrne's second solo album, Uh-Oh, appeared after the breakup of the Talking Heads in 1991. "Twistin' in the Wind," for example, "is a chipper diatribe about dirty dealings in Washington, D.C., and Everytown, U.S.A.," according to Josef Woodard in Rolling Stone. Rating the record an A-, Entertainment Weekly's Stephanie Zacharek noted that "Byrne integrates musical genres with still more confidence....

A Down Beat correspondent wrote that Byrne just didn't understand the musical style he was using and that his effort was merely a pastiche. Website--David Byrne Official Website: http://www.davidbyrne.com.

More than almost any other popular musician, the multitalented David Byrne is at home in many worlds: rock music, "art" music, ballet, film music, photography, and filmmaking.

And nearly every arrangement has been burnished to a luster."

Feelings, Byrne's solo work released in 1997, garnered attention both for its arresting cover--a Ken doll image of Byrne's head--and its stylistically broad arrangements. At the same time, I think it’s important to put this in context. Well received by critics, Uh-Oh is a collection of mostly up-tempo songs with an undercurrent of sarcasm and irony.

The Talking Heads albums of the 1980s--including Remain in Light, Naked, and Speaking in Tongues--show a substantial blending of international styles. Then, "later on, when I started breaking the beats down and putting them back together again, I saw how African and Afro-American songs were put together in similar ways. His own albums and those he produced for the Luaka Bop label offer bold amalgamations of African, Latin, Middle Eastern, East Indian, Japanese, rock, and classical music.

Byrne's interest in classical music forms led him to incorporate opera into Grown Backwards, his 2004 solo work released on Nonesuch Records. Uh-Oh, released by Luaka Bop/Sire Records in 1992, features some of the Latin musicians who appeared on Rei Momo and again displays Byrne's wide musical interests as well as his themes of alienation and social injustice.

Years later Byrne's approach took a different track with the score Lead Us Not into Temptation that accompanied the 2003 Scottish film Young Adam. Departing from Afro-Latin and Caribbean influences, Byrne created, according to All Music Guide reviewer Sean Westergaard, music that "often echoes the gloom and dankness of the Scottish climate."

Byrne's artistic activities are myriad, as displayed by his musical interests.

It's not like I just hear something on a record and go, oh, I'll cop that. So it's a pretty natural thing to want to find out where all this came from: Let's get back to whatever it is."

Since his interest in African music, Byrne's world musical tastes have moved closer to home: On 1989's Rei Momo he collaborated with Latin musicians and songwriters.

Set in the mid-1880s, the piece features probably the most classical of all musical styles Byrne had yet employed. David’s Asperger’s was one of many influences on an artist who sought out and absorbed influences like a sponge. It would be strange to imagine, as many multinational corporations seem to, that Western pop holds the copyright on musical creativity." He further maintained that "This interest in music not like that made in our own little villages (Dumbarton, Scotland, and Arbutus, Maryland, in my own case) is not, as it's often claimed, cultural tourism, because once you've let something in, let it grab hold of you, you're forever changed....

Some critics found fault with such cross-cultural musical borrowings. Unsurprisingly, it sounds actually kind of great, and apparently David Byrne thinks so too, which is a relief.

Billboard reports that Gomez's label, Interscope, played the track for Byrne and he approved it for use, and when they contacted a rep for Byrne, they concurred, stating that he "wholeheartedly gave his permission." David Byrne seems like a very nice man, to be honest, so it's not a surprise, and the thought of him listening to Selena Gomez is one that will cheer me for days to come.