Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues poll

2. Making Flippy Floppy
3. Girlfriend Is Better
4. Slippery People
5. I Get Wild/Wild Gravity
6. Swamp
8. Pull Up the Roots

Arrrgh - it's impossible, I love all these songs!!!

Went for Pull Up The Roots cos it prob won't get enough appreciation. It's got that slightly spooky vibe they nailed on The Great Curve

This album is incredible. Trusted my first instinct and went with "Slippery People".

Burning Down THe House Moon Rocks and TMBTP are like the two worst tracks on here.

bypassing tmbtp (which is my fave but not by as huge a margin as it might win by here or has won by elsewhere) voted for 'slippery people' purely for the stop making sense version. tbh i have no idea the last time i listened to this album, if i'm ever in the mood for this era i always go right for stop making sense.

i kinda hope we someday do a tracks poll of Talking Heads/associate acts, if only because "Genius of Love" has a fighting chance of being #1

mm no question.

I've never heard "This Must Be the Place" outside of this record. Voted "Girlfriend".

it's one of the talking heads songs i hear on oldies radio, along w/ (in rough order of frequency) 'burning down the house', 'psycho killer', 'take me to the river', 'and she was', 'once in a lifetime', 'life during wartime', and (good lord why) 'wild wild life'. i used to hear 'nothing but flowers', 'girlfriend is better', and 'stay up late' also on this aaa station but it went talk radio last fall. slot tmbtp before 'life during wartime'.

During their nineties exile I heard Take Me to the River and the eighties singles (And She Was, Wild wild Life) most.

i can't imagine ever hearing "This Must" on any radio station as much as "Life During Wartime." or, for that matter, "Stay Up Late."

yeah tbh i probably hear 'life during wartime' more esp since i hear both fom and sms versions.

in a weird way this album is worse than Remain in Light while on the whole having better songs

can you explain?

i can sorta weirdly buy that argument, thing the more 'proper songs' aspect of speaking in tongues is part of why it's a worse album (trend only even more accelerated w/ following albums, though nostalgia and howard finster probably makes me fonder of little creatures than speaking in tongues).

think rather than thing

the loss of Eno is really felt in the generally flatter/thinner production, but Byrne compensates by demonstrating a more developed mastery of conventional song structures and well-deployed vocal melodies. A majority of the songs on SiT have more memorable choruses and sing-along-able call and response bits than those on RiL, but RiL on the whole SOUNDS better.

This is about the only record in my collection where my favourite song is aligned w/ the most popular. TMBTP is just a really fucking great song in any context. My Rauschenberg vinyl is maybe the most annoying record in my collection. Admittedly it was a little beat up when I found it but I can never get it to resemble the thing of beauty I want it to.

the SIT tracks sound influenced by 12"s and early eighties R&B.

I think "Once in a Lifetime" and "Burning Down the House" are the only Heads songs I've heard on oldies radio.

I feel like Shakey's post ignores that their previous records were more song-oriented than RIL too.

Like Byrne was already writing great song-qua-songs.

not denying that, just saying he was getting better. agree that RiL (and to a lesser extent Fear of Music) are sort of detours from the pop song format

This is a really bad album. I listened to it the other day and I couldn't stand any of it. I really loved it when I was younger, though... :(

girlfriend is better

its weird that the SMS versions of all of these are all better

girlfriend is better

― turds (Hungry4Ass), Thursday, April 4, 2013 4:42 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

remain in light is better

This is Talking Heads' 'Brighten the Corners', isn't it?

First heard Swamp via Risky Business, yet somehow never connected the song with the movie title for all these years. Strange oversight. I'd probably vote for Burning Down The House if I hadn't heard it so many times, but will stick with Swamp.

should point out that "Burning Down The House" sounded damn strange for a top ten pop hit in '83: all that space punctuated with bursts of instruments.

i always wondered about Risky Business, which only came out 3 months after Speaking -- i thought maybe the screenplay had had some other working title that was later named after the lyric, but i guess it was just a total coincidence that they already had the movie's title when the phrase was used prominently in a recent hit album they could use on the soundtrack?

Swamp was in The King Of Comedy too iirc? Before it was anywhere else too I think.

its weird that the SMS versions of all of these are all better

Not that weird considering that the Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads versions are better than the album cuts too

In the continuing Great-American-Songbook-ization of "This Must Be the Place," husband-and-wife cabaret stars John Pizzarelli & Jessica Molaskey's recent show opens with a duet/medley of "TMBTP" and the Beatles' "Two of Us."

I voted 'slippery people,' but pretty much love 91% of this album.

Was never a huge fan of this band but I can never turn off "Burning Down The House" when it comes on. One of the most aggressively weird-sounding singles of its time.

i still can't stop imagining Tom Jones when I hear that song, hence why I just can't parse it.

In the continuing Great-American-Songbook-ization of "This Must Be the Place," husband-and-wife cabaret stars John Pizzarelli & Jessica Molaskey's recent show opens with a duet/medley of "TMBTP" and the Beatles' "Two of Us."

this album does have a heavy pop sound, really like it.

i did a show a while back where one of our opening bands busted out "This Must Be The Place," their cover was pretty good so i couldn't really be like UGH WHAT A CLICHE. also, the song was on my own damn wedding playlist so i can't really knock it as an alt wedding staple.

I've never been to an alt.wedding.

i don't think i have really, either, mine was pretty trad and square aside from parts of my playlist

its weird that the SMS versions of all of these are all better

SMS is horrible, wtf is with these defenders of those awful overdubbed drums & etc. I vastly prefer the dry, meticulous Eno-less sound of the studio versions.

sorry

ha, no problem. I also have personal beef w/that record cause there was a point in the 90's where every baby boomer I knew thought that rec was like the coolest thing ever, and they also liked Sting, so there's some guilt by association there.

90s boomers otm

In the continuing Great-American-Songbook-ization of "This Must Be the Place," husband-and-wife cabaret stars John Pizzarelli & Jessica Molaskey's recent show opens with a duet/medley of "TMBTP" and the Beatles' "Two of Us."

Wait when did this happen? Were you there to see it? Really like their Jon Hendricks/Sondheim medley, "Cloudburst/Getting Married Today"

In fact, they used the "Cloudburst/Getting Married Today" alternating-verses template for this medley too--Jessica's "This Must Be the Place" alternating with John's "Two of Us."

I saw them last fall in South Orange, NJ; Mom (a total Pizzarelli fangirl) and Dad had an extra ticket. I enjoyed the set more than I expected because it wasn't all standards; they did a lot of singer-songwriter material--Paul Simon ("Hearts and Bones"), Joni Mitchell (John: "Free Man in Paris", Jessica: "The Circle Game"), Billy Joel ("Rosalinda's Eyes")--alongside the Sondheim and Jobim.

if you listen to the Saratoga bootleg from the same tour, it has to be said that the band really did sound a lot like the movie and the overdubs are pretty minimal; more for added beef and rectifying mistakes than owt else. they were tight as fuck.

the live versions get me so pumpde and stoked. the studio versions are sedate and sound like buttholes that were made by sleepy people in a gross basement, but not in a cool way. i dont know what the words overdubbed, dry, meticulous, eno and studio mean

classic ade

I agree. Pull Up The Roots is very high up in my favourite TH songs

If we're just going off a song-for-song basis, this is clearly the best TH album too. RIL might be a bit more daring but it has fillery moments whereas Tongues is just bangers beginning to end

This album is the soundtrack to the summer I graduated from high school. It didn't grab me immediately like the others did, but it's a grower.

Y'all are mad.

"Pull Up the Roots," "Moon Rocks," "I Get Wild" -- instant skippable.

Will still rep for I Get Wild like 5 years again during the last thread revive. Great album.

^ago

xxp Hard disagree, Alfred. Those are all solid tracks.

TMBTP the clear and deserving winner. The Stop Making Sense version is even better.

Pull Up The Roots SLAYS

controp: I've never found TMBTP very exciting.

I asked my guitar teacher, who has a really good grasp of music theory and whatnot, why This Must Be the Place pops out for everyone as the sentimental favorite, and he observed it's the only track on the album that isn't more or less blues-based.

Well, and it's Weymouth on guitar strumming the same couple notes for five minutes

Will still rep for I Get Wild like 5 years again during the last thread revive. Great album.

― that's not my post,

Cool bass line.

It's Byrne's vocals on that song that do it for me. "When you're standing here beside me/I love the passing of time/Never for money, always for love/Cover up and say goodnight, say goodnight" is pure magic.

Also "And you love me till my heart stops/Love me till I'm dead" is such a surprising couplet from David Byrne.

Pull Up The Roots is fantastic. Not sure if it’s a remix I like best or the original but what a song.

Listening to this album rn. I keep expecting the "Whoaaa!" In "Swamp."