Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
Crosseyed and Painless
The Great Curve
Once in a Lifetime
Houses in Motion
Seen and Not Seen
Listening Wind
The Overload
Talking Heads weren’t very far behind Television when it came to the early pioneering of post-punk aesthetics, and truthfully any of their albums released before this, their fourth record, could represent the band and the history of the genre beautifully.
Remain In Light is different. It’s a truly unique album, with funk, afrobeat and early hip-hop rhythms seamlessly merging with their more abrasive art-rock ideas. It also acted as proof of the band's ability to crossover to a more mainstream audience, giving them their first US Billboard top 20 album and a worldwide smash hit single in the iconic Once In A Lifetime.
"My favourite album is Remain In Light by Talking Heads," comedian Bill Bailey told Classic Rock. "It’s one of those that keeps coming round and round. I was in my teens when it came out in 1980. I’d heard Once In A Lifetime and that was it, I got the album, and I’ve been playing it ever since."
Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute.
Other albums released in October 1980
- Group Sex - Circle Jerks
- Zenyatta Mondatta - The Police
- Lightning to the Nations - Diamond Head
- Chance - Manfred Mann's Earth Band
- Chinatown - Thin Lizzy
- Making Movies - Dire Straits
- The River - Bruce Springsteen
- Levitation - Hawkwind
- Just Supposin' - Status Quo
- Boy - U2
- Stage Struck - Rory Gallagher
- All Shook Up - Cheap Trick
- Ace of Spades - Motörhead
- QE2 - Mike Oldfield
- Killing Joke - Killing Joke
- Stagefright - Witchfynde
- Borderline - Ry Cooder
- More George Thorogood and the Destroyers - George Thorogood and the Destroyers
- On the Edge - The Babys
- Seconds Of Pleasure - Rockpile
- Greener Postures - Snakefinger
What they said...
"Polyrhythmic, lyrically cryptic and featuring one of the most awesomely weird guitar solos of all time (Adrien Belew’s blippy genius on Born Under Punches), Remain in Light stands as David Byrne and company’s masterpiece. It’s rooted in tradition, yet it sounds delightfully futuristic – even three decades after its initial release." (Paste)
"The album presents such a strange artistic vision, foreign to what came before but operating as though it were the culmination of a long tradition, that it seems to declare the power of weirdness itself. To be not just strange but singular, to reinvent a form in a way that you can dance to, to smuggle beer into the museum: This is the visceral thrill of art. We want to deny it on theoretical grounds, but we can’t. So we must revise our theories." (Pitchfork)
"Remain in Light had more words than any previous Heads record, but they counted for less than ever in the sweep of the music. The album's single, Once in a Lifetime, flopped upon release, but over the years it became an audience favourite due to a striking video, its inclusion in the band's 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense, and its second single release (in the live version) because of its use in the 1986 movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills, when it became a minor chart entry." (AllMusic)
What you said...
Greg Schwepe: The FM rock station I listened to during my formative music-moulding years played pretty much your standard Midwest US rock fare; Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Boston, Pink Floyd, Bob Seger, Aerosmith…you get the picture. But it seems the Program Director also had a little “new wave” streak as this same station also provided me my first listens of The Police, Gary Numan, The Pretenders, Joe Jackson, and yes…Talking Heads. And while it was Take Me To The River that I heard first, something stuck with me about the song and band even though it was not your standard “plug a Les Paul into a Marshall and crank it to 11” type music.
Fast forward a year or two and I’m at college and get involved with our little 10 watt radio station (“WUSO…89.1 commercial free…” went the tagline). I quickly learn what college/indie/alternative radio is and that most of the stuff I hear on the station or see printed on the playlists posted around campus, I’ve never even heard of. But strangely enough… I like it!
Interesting in that before MTV, the internet, and streaming, your musical tastes were shaped by the radio stations you could pick up, what records were stocked at your local record store, and what music magazines were sold at your local newsstand. I can tell you that none of these new wave/alternative bands ever graced the pages of the Circus magazines I used to buy! I show up at college and there’s a whole new world of music now available to me.
Our station had a bunch of favourite bands that the staff, DJs and campus seemed to like. Bands that pretty much got played so much that all their albums were kept in the bin right in the booth, eliminating the need for you to run back to the record library to retrieve them. And you guessed it…Talking Heads were one of those bands (and not surprisingly, the other new wave bands I listed above too). I was now aware that they had even more albums than the one Take Me To The River was on, and one of those was Remain In Light.
Right off the bat, I will call Remain In Light frenetic, busy, and with a lot going on. But somehow, not overwhelming. Sometimes you get stuff that’s “a little weird, quirky, and quiet.” The first half of this album is not quiet by any stretch of the imagination. BOOM, it rattles you right at the start. Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) certainly delivers a punch. Beats, beats, and more beats. Busy, busy, busy!
Crosseyed and Painless and The Great Curve follow with more of the same hypnotic groove that keeps you locked in. Then comes Once In a Lifetime with the memorable quotable lyrics. And once MTV came around, you got to see David Byrne do his funky dance and if this song came on during a party you were at… you’d definitely saw one or two people imitating Byrne’s moves. More catchy grooves to keep you attached during Houses In Motion.
The album finally starts to slow down a little with the hypnotic Seen and Not Seen. More repeating beats. Repeating beats. Throughout the album we are also treated to the guitar treatments of Adrian Belew (who, by no surprise became a radio station favourite once he released a solo album).
The final two tracks, Listening Wind and The Overload descend into atmospheric, slightly trippy tracks that are almost opposite bookends to the first two tracks. These final tracks are as low key as the first two are totally jacked up. Lets the listener slowly finish the album out but still stay engaged.
At the end of the day, not everything Talking Heads did is everyone’s cup of tea. The band is either “Weird and quirky, but I like them” or “Weird and quirky, and I don’t like them.” For some, David Byrne’s yips and squawks can be a little much. As I mentioned at the beginning of my review, I was surprised how much I liked Talking Heads, even with them being the total opposite of a lot of other stuff I listened to. 8 out of 10 for me on this one. The first of many college radio finds. "Wait... there's more new stuff I can listen to?"
Mike Canoe: Let's answer the primary question up front. Not only do I think Remain In Light is indisputably the best Talking Heads album, it's one of the best albums by anyone ever. The first time I heard it, to paraphrase The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, my brain grew three sizes that day. It was so innovative and introduced me to things like Afrobeat and polyrhythms - even if I didn't yet know them by name. Just as importantly, it introduced to Brian Eno in his role as producer.
It's cliché to say that Remain In Light is an album with no bad songs on it but it's the exception that proves the rule. It's also cliché to say that the one hit, Once in a Lifetime, is not even the best song on the album. It's certainly one of the best songs but an argument could be made for any of the seven others as well.
There's the insanely danceable, The Great Curve, with its immortal lyric, "the world moves on a woman's hips...," the cautionary tale of Seen and Not Seen backed by a gentle humming melody, to Listening Wind, which took me a long time to realize that the titular "wind" was actually a bomb blast. Then there's the closer, absolutely crushing in every sense of the word, The Overload. "A terrible signal...too weak to even recognize...a gentle collapsing...." Woo! Goosebumps every time.
As alluded to above, the lyrics are a big part of what I love about the album, but now the jittery paranoia found in songs like Animals or Psycho Killer were embedded in a swirling mix of funk, pop, world music, and brilliant noise. David Byrne delivers his lyrics in anything from yips to gasps to shouts to whispers and the musicianship is outstanding. It took me a lot longer to understand and appreciate the contributions of the additional musicians like Adrian Belew and Nona Hendryx but they are essential to the big sound of the album.
A final cliché to wrap things up: Never meet your heroes - or, at least, don't learn too much about them if you want to appreciate the music unsullied. My love of Remain In Light, and the Talking Heads and Eno, in general, dimmed somewhat when I learned about the egos, power plays, and general acrimony in and around the band. It was good to listen to it again with relatively fresh years this week. It is a truly outstanding album.
John Davidson: Most of the classic rock and prog albums we review are enjoyed by a strange intersection of bikers, potheads, science geeks and old school DnD players. Talking Heads on the other hand is music for art (humanities) students.
I was surprised to see this album was released in 1980. It feels like it's from a few years later. It tries very hard to be avant garde, with vocal and guitar loops over poly rhythmic percussion. But for the most part I just found it dull. It's well made for sure, but it's not for me.
Evan Sanders: Remain In Light is an amazing Talking Heads album, maybe not their best, but certainly the one where they made it clear that they were not a punk-new wave outfit. As a punk fan in the 70s and 80s, I admit I didn't like this one at first, as it was too much world music for me rather than songs like Psycho Killer.
However, the changes in the band had been quite clear in their earlier efforts, from several of the songs on Fear of Music, e.g. I Zimbra, the gospel-tinged Take Me To The River on their second album, and more. My only complaint about Remain In Ligh, is that the album loses steam in the last three songs, which seem more like demos. Due to that, either Fear of Music or Speaking In Tongues get my vote for best Talking Heads studio album, while Stop Making Sense is my favourite overall.
Mark Herrington: In answer to the question “Is this their best album?“, it very much depends on your taste. My personal favourite is 1979's Fear Of Music which has a darker, more hypnotic feel throughout. It feels more consistent and thematic than this.
Remain In Light has a number of stand-out classic tracks and some lesser songs - so feels less fluid to me. Even though its highlights are probably better tracks overall, it doesn’t move me and get under my skin the way Fear... does.
Peter Barron: I prefer Fear Of Music, but not by much.
Brian Carr: I never listened to much Talking Heads music - always thought they were outside the realms of what moves me. During a partial spin through Remain In Light this afternoon, it struck me as rather repetitive within each song. That said, it also struck me that, in the right mood, I might actually like it reasonably well.
Adrian Bolster: I walked into a pub in Manchester a few weeks ago, Gullivers in the Northern Quarter, and The Overload was playing on the jukebox. I knew my son had brought me to the right place. £1 for 5 tracks made the afternoon fly by! This is a masterpiece in music, not just for Talking Heads.
Mal Gilliatt: Who would have thought after a lifetime listening to hard rock and heavy metal I would later on discover Talking Heads and realise how good music could really be. Stop Talking Sense has got to be one of the greatest concert movies of all time !
Philip Qvist: I like Speaking In Tongues, I loved their live Stop Making Sense video and there is a lot that I like about Remain In Light and Little Creatures, but Talking Heads is another one of those bands where I would be more than happy to have just a Greatest Hits compilation in my collection.
Remain In Light starts off well with Born Under Punches, Crosseyed And Painless and the Great Curve, but the album sort of runs out of steam after Houses In Motion - while I still prefer the single version of Once In A Lifetime. Plenty of percussion was used on the album, while guest guitarist Adrian Belew added some nice touches on the record.
Good production work from Brian Eno (even if he seemed to have ruffled a few feathers in the Talking Heads camp), while David Byrne's lyrics were wonderfully wacky as usual.
So all in all, a very good album but not a classic for me - and the less said about the cover, the better. It's pretty bad in my opinion - but hey, others may like it.
Ben L. Connor: This isn’t just Talking Heads’ greatest album, it’s one of the best albums ever made by anyone. I’ve listened to this album dozens of times, and I still find myself discovering new riffs and licks buried amongst the flurry of sounds and ideas.
Gary Claydon: One of those albums that rewards repeated listening. Interesting but no masterpiece. I was a fan of Eno from his Roxy Music days. His introduction threw fuel on the previously smouldering embers of internecine strife between Byrne and his bandmates. Why is it that conflict so often heightens the creative process? Worth the price of admission for The Overload alone, Remain In Light also suffers from trying to be too clever simply for the sake of it. 7/10.
Neil Immerz: I’ll say this about the band (and I’ve wanted to for a long time) - they are not punk. Ok so they played CBGB’s back in the 70s like Blondie did, but that doesn’t make them a punk band. They are a rock/pop band. Ffs, the sex pistols and Ramones were more ‘punk’ than these guys ever could’ve been.
As for this album, Once In A Lifetime is my favourite song off it. Thats it.
Wesley Winegarden: After years of listening to the whole Talking Heads catalogue obsessively, I still put this album at #3 in the band's recording output, behind Fear Of Music and their best album Speaking In Tongues.
Don't get me wrong though, this is still a 5-star album, or if we're doing ½s, a 4½ star album filled with glorious experiments in sound. I still hear new things every time I listen to it. My only gripe, and it is a tiny one, is that some of the experiments sound unfinished, especially in the latter part of the album; my brother used to say (back in the days of vinyl) that Once In A Lifetime was only put on side-two to force people to turn the album over and listen to the second side.
I tend to agree, the first four tracks on this album are amongst the best of the band's amazing output, but the last four to me, sound like they were "works in progress" that they never finished. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the last half of the album just doesn't work for me... Maybe, Tina, Jerry and Chris had had enough of Burns and Eno's collective egos by then and just called it finished.
Chris Elliott: I was 14 in 1980 and this wasn't Psycho Killer, so it passed me by. It was an album I discovered probably six years later. It's a thing of rare beauty, and one of those records that opened my ears to a wider palette. It's been an actual pleasure to hear again.
Final score: 8.50 (38 votes cast, total score 323)
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