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Speaking in Tongues is the fifth studio album by American rock band Talking Heads, released on June 1, 1983, by Sire Records. After their split with producer Brian Eno and a short hiatus, which allowed the individual members to pursue side projects, recording began in 1982. It became the band’s commercial breakthrough and produced the band’s sole US top-ten hit, “Burning Down the House“.
The album’s tour was documented in Jonathan Demme‘s 1984 film Stop Making Sense, which generated a live album of the same name. The album also crossed over to the dance charts, where it peaked at number two for six weeks. It is the group’s highest-charting album on the US Billboard 200, peaking at number 15. It was also their biggest-selling album in Canada, where it was certified platinum in 1983.
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.
Talking Heads
- David Byrne – vocals, guitars, keyboards, synthesizers, bass guitar, percussion
- Jerry Harrison – keyboards, synthesizers, guitars, backing vocals
- Tina Weymouth – bass guitar, backing vocals, synthesizer, guitar
- Chris Frantz – drums, backing vocals, synthesizer
Additional musicians
- Wally Badarou – synthesizers (1, 6, 9)
- Bernie Worrell – synthesizers (3)
- Alex Weir – guitar (2, 6, 7, 8)
- Steve Scales – percussion (1, 7)
- Raphael Dejesus – percussion (4, 5, 8)
- David Van Tieghem – percussion (5, 9)
- L. Shankar – double violin (2)
- Richard Landry – saxophone (4)
- Nona Hendryx – backing vocals (4)
- Dolette McDonald – backing vocals (4)
Technical
- Talking Heads – producers
- Butch Jones – recording
- John Convertino – recording assistant
- Alex Sadkin – overdubbing, mixing
- Frank Gibson – overdubbing assistant, mix assistant
- Jay Mark – overdubbing assistant, mix assistant
- Ted Jensen – mastering at Sterling Sound (New York City, New York)
- Brian Kehew – 2006 Dual Disc bonus mixes
- Robert Rauschenberg – limited edition cover art
- David Byrne – original cover design
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