04 September 2025
Newsdesk
David Byrne sits down with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to discuss his album Who Is The Sky? During the conversation he talks about his creative process, how the music industry has shifted, Talking Heads’ legacy and more.
David Byrne tells Apple Music about working with Tom Hull
I think working with someone like Tom it comes with a fair amount of trust. You trust that he's going to get a good sound on this instrument or the drums or whatever it might be. I don't have to micromanage things. In the past, I might've done that a bit more. Like, 'oh, can I hear that? Can I hear that? Can I check that?' I thought, no, no, no, no, let it go a little bit. Let it go. I've become a lot more relaxed. There's still a lot of work to do, but I've become more relaxed about it and less of a little dictator about it has to be this way, it has to be that way, and it ends up kind going that way anyway.
David Byrne on how he measures success
I suppose the real measure of success for me comes from if it feels right to me and to my friends, people I'm around, maybe some other musicians that I know. And then you never know how it's going to be received by a larger public, by an audience, a live audience, a listening audience. You just never know. It could sound great and people just go, that's not what we're into right now. You have no idea. But if I get to a point where I like it, my friends like it, I go, okay, if it doesn't succeed, whatever, financially, I could be in for a bit of a loss. That's happened before, but okay. Live and learn. Just keep going.
David Byrne on how he felt playing for a larger live audience
Zane Lowe: "How did that happen?" Did you ever find yourself asking yourself that question at times?
David Byrne: Oh, absolutely. I found it a little bit when Talking Heads started getting very popular and we were playing arenas and sometimes co-headlining or whatever at stadiums or something like that. I thought, "Oh, this is kind of lovely that we've achieved this success, but I also feel like we could start to like this a little too much. It could confine us and restrict."
Zane Lowe: And what was that feeling like, if you can remember? What was that anxiety rooted in? You tell me. Was it losing control of what you loved about the experience versus what people wanted from the experience, perhaps, as an example?
David Byrne: I mean, obviously, the same thing happens when you're playing a festival or something like that. It becomes just this sea of people. You have to get into another headspace to be able to connect.
Zane Lowe: Yeah, it's more performative?
David Byrne: Yeah, as opposed to playing in a theatre or someplace else. It can still be quite big. But then you can feel kind of a connection with people and that you're actually kind of, "I'm a person. You're a person." But then, when it turns into this mass thing, it's a very different thing.
David Byrne on how the music industry has changed
On the positive side, I think musicians now have the ability to control what their music sounds like. They don't have to take out a big loan from a record company or whatever, unless they want to, but to make music that sounds the way they want it to sound, that's a really good thing. Getting it out to the public and marketing it and all that kind of thing, that's where they need some help and some financial muscle on this and that. It's still hard to survive as a musician, especially with kind of rents as high as they are, and home-ownership being something that seems unattainable for an emerging musician, but it shouldn't be. It should be like, no, that's part of growing up and whatever. You do that and it should be possible.
David Byrne on his feelings towards being viewed as avant-garde
I'm self-aware enough to realise that I'm viewed as being kind of somewhat card carrying member of avant-garde, but I also have this belief that it's possible to do kind of a sort of radical, or new things or whatever, and still make a pop song. It doesn't have to be a formula. You can do something new in that kind of format and can still appeal to people. There's not an absolute contradiction there, so yes, so having done those things and experienced them, and I love that world. I know it's a world of where I'll go to see something, and it could be incredible, could be something that blows my mind and I go, that completely makes me rethink what performance or theater, or how music could be performed, changes the way I think about it. It could also be something where I go, that needed a little bit more work.
David Byrne on Talking Heads' legacy
I'm proud of what we did. I'm very pleasantly surprised that it seems to be holding up, that people still find it relevant. I think it goes back to what we were saying just a minute ago, that we kind of managed to do the thing where we were experimenting and trying new things, but still remaining accessible enough that we obviously cared, that we weren't pushing people away. We did want people to listen. And we walked that line and we found that balance from time to time. I think people appreciate that, so I thought, "Wow, this is kind of amazing." In fact, I think some of those older records are now being re-released with all this extra stuff, things like that, which is kind of wonderful. I think even for me, sometimes it's more extra stuff than I could possibly deal with, but it's there. It's there.
David Byrne on his upcoming tour 'An Evening With David Byrne - Who is the Sky Tour'
I'm not quite ready to kind of rewind the clock and go, oh, let's go back to something really simple, simple, kind of basic. We'll just get up and play. I thought, no, we have to build on that. So I thought, I'm keeping the untethered, everyone can move around thing. Got rid of the chain. We had this box made with a chain, but now we have these screens that go around that will put us in, I hope, in different places as opposed to, but it'll still be kind of us in the middle. I remember, yeah, we have more dancers, a great band, lots of singers. I think musically, it's going to sound great. I realised that that show evolved over time. I have to allow this one to do the same thing. Give it space to grow. Let it tell me what it wants to be. Let it tell me what it's about. I realised with that show, I realised it revealed itself. It revealed that it had a kind of story, a kind of arc, and I thought, okay, if you can bring that out a little bit more, and I think the audience will get that, that we're actually going on a journey. And I thought, I don't know exactly what the journey is for this one yet.
