Hollywood loves a spectacle, but nothing on the Dolby Theatre’s storied stage looked, moved, or sounded quite like David Byrne’s Who Is The Sky? show. On a crisp autumn night, the home of the Oscars became a glowing laboratory of new-wave nostalgia, avant-garde theater, and communal catharsis. Perched in the middle of it all, dressed in a crisp blue jumpsuit just like the 12-member cast orbiting him, was Byrne: rock legend, Broadway auteur, art-pop alchemist, and still, at 73, one of the most daring showmen alive, let alone touring the globe.
Before the choreography snapped to life and the narrative unfurled, the sold-out crowd knew they were in the presence of a generational original.
David Byrne’s resume resonates far beyond his already-impressive credentials as a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer with Talking Heads. The Scottish-born, Canadian- and American-raised musician is one of the most influential minds to ever fuse music, movement, and visual art.
As a member of Talking Heads, Byrne helped change the course of American music, blending punk, new wave, funk, minimalism, and Afrobeat with his brilliant oddball poetics. Albums like Fear of Music, Remain in Light, and Speaking in Tongues made him a defining voice of the late 20th century.
When the Heads dissolved, Byrne didn’t slow down. Instead, he expanded his scope. He composed film scores, created installation art, wrote books, collaborated with Brian Eno, St. Vincent, and Fatboy Slim, and eventually reinvented himself as an unlikely Broadway titan.
His 2018 album, American Utopia, blossomed into a hit stage production: a choreographed, wire-free spectacle that later became an Emmy-winning HBO film directed by Spike Lee. That production laid the foundation for Byrne’s latest theatrical chapter.
Which brings us to Who Is The Sky?
Released earlier this year, it’s his first album since American Utopia and one of his most personal works ever. It’s a collection of existential, witty, deeply human songs born during the isolation of the pandemic. Produced with Kid Harpoon and arranged with the Ghost Train Orchestra, the album fuses chamber pop, art-rock, and Byrne’s singular worldview into a gentle, curious meditation on what we learned when the world stopped.
The live show builds on it directly. With a mix of songs from his newest release, tracks from his other solo and collaborative works, and (of course) plenty of Heads classics, Byrne fastens a narrative about solitude, absurdity, connection, and rediscovery.
At the Dolby Theatre, it played like a surreal, neon-lit dream.
The show opened with the unmistakable pulse of a Talking Heads classic, “Heaven”. Byrne stepped forward on what looked to be the surface of the moon, warmly lit, his voice steady and ghostly, otherworldly yet deeply human. A few members of his band emerged to join him as the Earth rose over the horizon behind them. That introduction occasioned an explosive ovation from the crowd, which went on so long Byrne eventually laughed, bowed, and waved them to quiet so he could continue the production.
Clearly, this wouldn’t be just a concert or a Broadway show. Rather, it was an encounter with Byrne’s ritual of connection, crafted from the oddities, anxieties, revelations, and absurdities of the COVID years.
“Everybody Laughs” kicked up the narrative with a jolt of jubilation, as David and his crew stomped around a white-lit floor. He then told a story (half confession, half comedy) about a time in his youth when he was lying in a grassy field near a Yoo-hoo factory with a girl while peaking on LSD. This, it turns out, was the inspiration for the Talking Heads song “And She Was”.
With “Strange Overtones”, Byrne and his blue-clad ensemble slid into a dreamlike rhythm: dancers tracing geometric patterns, musicians drifting freely across the stage like a synchronized flock. The set morphed into a rooftop, then a shifting cityscape. Colors rippled, day became night, buildings stretched and dissolved. It was Talking Heads re-imagined for an even more surreal age.
Byrne’s show is part revue, part memoir. Between songs, he cracked jokes about moisturizers, pandemic loneliness, fascism, freedom, and the human impulse to dance on balconies during lockdown. His tone was tender, curious, slightly bewildered, that of someone who has always seen the world at a strange angle but knows, now more than ever, we all feel that way.
In “(Nothing But) Flowers”, he and his cast were transported from a drab office to a lush cornfield, the visuals cheekily echoing the lyrical inversion: the end of civilization as a cheerful return to nature.
“This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” brought a foggy forest to life behind him as many in the audience leapt to their feet for a Heads-worthy dance. Byrne followed that up with a story about the need for kindness as a form of resistance, bringing in a bit of politics to applause from attendees.
Then, the screens around the stage dropped red curtains like a magic trick, and Byrne, alone with an acoustic guitar, delivered the hushed “Don’t Be Like That”. You could hear the Dolby Theatre breathe as one.
From there, the show expanded again. Names of performers floated above them like stars in a night sky during “Independence Day”. Fred Armisen wandered out for a brief cameo after “Slippery People”. Byrne joked about being mistaken for Norman Bates at Jazz Fest.
Byrne’s new songs, “What Is the Reason for It?” and “I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party”, were playful philosophical puzzles, every line wobbling between profound truth and sly winking absurdity.
The emotional peak came in a slew of apartment-themed songs—including “My Apartment Is My Friend” and a monochrome cover of Paramore’s “Hard Times”—wherein Byrne guided the audience through the pandemic’s strangest intimacy: befriending the walls around us.
After a moody, slow-burn “Psycho Killer” with a cello-bass solo that rattled the rafters, Byrne snapped the room awake with “Life During Wartime”. Flashing white lights mimicked the chaos of crisis, while the screens flickered with images of anti-ICE protests. The choreography went sharp, frantic, declarative.
By the time “Once in a Lifetime” rolled in, the entire Dolby Theatre was on its feet, echoing Byrne’s ageless question: “Well… how did I get here?”
The encore was pure catharsis that brought the show home, in more ways that one. David and company performed “Everybody’s Coming to My House” around a single dangling lightbulb, echoing communal singing traditions from Abyssinian churches to COVID-era balconies. “Burning Down the House” wrapped the night in euphoric chaos, with dancers whirling, horns blasting, and screens exploding with color.
With that, the Dolby had transformed from a theater into a jubilant vortex of art, memory, rhythm, and healing.
Who Is The Sky? asks a lot of questions—about identity, isolation, politics, community, absurdity, mortality, joy, and more. Byrne never provides answers outright. Instead, he dances with them, laughs at them, sings around them, and invites the audience to share in the absurd wonder of being human.
As a work, in its totality, it’s at least as theatrical, philosophical, and communal as American Utopia, and maybe even more daring.
Like all of Byrne’s best creations, it leaves you with the lingering feeling that something inside you has been gently rearranged.
Audiences across America will have that same opportunity for theatrical revelation a la David Byrne as the Who Is The Sky? Tour continues on through Austin and Dallas to end November, followed by dates in Atlanta and Miami in early December. Come January, Byrne and his crew will be off to Australia and New Zealand, followed by a run of dates across Europe and the U.K. in February and March. Get tickets here.
