Earlier today, Rolling Stone released a new interview with David Byrne, the iconic alt-rocker and frontman for the Talking Heads. Currently, Byrne is winding up for the release of a new solo album, American Utopia, which is due on out March 9th and marks his first solo album since 2004’s Grown Backwards. In support of the forthcoming American Utopia, the artist has announced an extensive global tour, which will see him performing across the Americas and Europe.
However, in the Rolling Stone interview, Byrne reiterated why he’s avoided a Talking Heads reunion, noting:
I see what happens with other people when they do their reunions – and then it turns into a second reunion and a third reunion. With someone like the Pixies, it’s different – they’re getting the audience now that they deserved ages ago. But with a lot of them, it just seems like you don’t have anything new to say, and you go, “OK, this is just some kind of nostalgia exercise.” And I’m not interested in that.
Yet, on his website, Byrne writes: “We’ll be doing some new songs… and many others that will, I assume, be familiar. I’m excited. This is the most ambitious show I’ve done since the shows that were filmed for Stop Making Sense, so fingers crossed.”
Byrne also explained his vision for the upcoming tour, detailing aspects of the stage set, including that the tour will feature “six drummers and percussionists” and that “the human beings become the set.” Rolling Stone summarized his vision as “a stage full of musicians in constant, choreographed motion, expanding a concept he and St. Vincent used for the horn section on their joint 2012 tour.”
During the interview, in addition to discussing his new album, his recent projects, and cultural appropriation and denouncing President Donald J. Trump and the Republican Party (“[Donald Trump’s] a fucking racist. … If [Republicans] don’t break rank, they’re as racist as he is. And let’s not forget that.”), David Byrne also spoke about pop music. While he rebuffed that his recent work has been poppy, he addressed Selena Gomez’s “Bad Liar”, which uses samples from the Talking Heads’ iconic “Psycho Killer”, explaining, “Yeah, repurpose the stuff. That’s totally fine. And, you know, we get paid for it too. So thank you, Selena Gomez!”
You can read the full interview with David Byrne on Rolling Stone here.