talking heads / albums

2,836,250 plays
1,003 SHARES
2,598 FAVS
136 fans

- Speaking in Tongues
- - 8,189 plays
  - 7 favs
  - 0 shares
Talking Heads
Released 1983

Girlfriend Is Better
05:45
908 plays

Making Flippy Floppy
05:53
849 plays

Moon Rocks
05:42
794 plays

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songs

- 1
- Burning Down the House
- 04:00
- 1,847 plays

- 2
- Making Flippy Floppy
- 05:53
- 849 plays

- 3
- Girlfriend Is Better
- 05:45
- 908 plays

- 4
- Slippery People
- 05:03
- 771 plays

- 5
- I Get Wild/Wild Gravity
- 05:14
- 627 plays

- 6
- Swamp
- 05:09
- 763 plays

- 7
- Moon Rocks
- 05:42
- 794 plays

- 8
- Pull up the Roots
- 05:08
- 626 plays

- 9
- This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
- 04:56
- 1,049 plays

album review

Talking Heads found a way to open up the dense textures of the music they had developed with Brian Eno on their two previous studio albums for Speaking in Tongues, and were rewarded with their most popular album yet. Ten backup singers and musicians accompanied the original quartet, but somehow the sound was more spacious, and the music admitted aspects of gospel, notably in the call-and-response of "Slippery People," and John Lee Hooker-style blues, on "Swamp." As usual, David Byrne determinedly sang and chanted impressionistic, nonlinear lyrics, sometimes by mix-and-matching clichés ("No visible means of support and you have not seen nothin' yet," he declared on "Burning Down the House," the Heads' first Top Ten hit), and the songs' very lack of clear meaning was itself a lyrical subject. "Still don't make no sense," Byrne admitted in "Making Flippy Floppy," but by the next song, "Girlfriend Is Better," that had become an order -- "Stop making sense," he chanted over and over. Some of his charming goofiness had returned since the overly serious Remain in Light and Fear of Music, however, and the accompanying music, filled with odd percussive and synthesizer sounds, could be unusually light and bouncy. The album closer, "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)," even sounded hopeful. Well, sort of. Despite their formal power, Talking Heads' preceding two albums seemed to have painted them into a corner, which may be why it took them three years to craft a follow-up, but on Speaking in Tongues, they found an open window and flew out of it. ~ William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide