Have You Heard... David Byrne's 'Who Is The Sky?'

Album Art by Shira Inbar (@shira_no_filter - IG), in collaboration with Tom Van der Borght (@tomvanderborght_official) and Ahmed Klink (@ahmedklink), Album cover reproduced not-for-profit, in compliance with Aus Copyright Law

In a world where the term ‘living legend’ is thrown around pretty loosely, I think we can all agree that David Byrne is one of the very few that definitely qualifies as such. Whether it was through his work with ‘Talking Heads,’ or through his various solo endeavours, I think David Byrne has left permanent, ever-lasting marks on the worlds of music and culture. It is for this reason that I feel such great shame for having mixed feelings on his new album ‘Who Is the Sky?’

Background & Context

The album marks his ninth solo outing overall, and comes seven years after his last offering, the massively successful ‘American Utopia’ (2018). As a huge fan of both Talking Heads and projects like ‘American Utopia’ or ‘Stop Making Sense,’ I was super excited for this release, so you can imagine my disappointment when I finished listening feeling… confused. The album was made in collaboration with the New York-based ‘Ghost Town Orchestra,’ and I felt their addition led to the creation of a super wide mixture of different sounding tracks. There were a tonne (and I mean a TONNE) of various musical elements present on pretty much every song featured, and while I thought this worked for some tracks, I thought it left some that sounded a little over-the-top, almost over-produced.

Standout Tracks

On standout tracks like ‘Everybody Laughs’ and ‘A Door Called No,’ this wide palette of elements worked super-duper well. The combination of strings, horns, woodwind, vocals, and guitar (as well as a standout marimba line) made ‘Everybody Laughs’ one of the most fun songs featured on the album. The track serves as a meditation on the human experience, and I think it’s almost impossible not to wanna dance to this track when listening. ‘A Door Called No’ is carried by the strings and they’re super moving, punctuated by these horn phrases that really suck you into the love tale Byrne is singing about. 

Photo taken by Kris Connor/GettyImages - reproduced not-for-profit, and in compliance under Aus Copyright Law

Problems

Speaking more to the over-production side of things, I think this was most emblematic on tracks such as ‘The Avant Garde,’ or ‘My Apartment Is My Friend.’ I felt like ‘The Avant Garde’ featured a number of melodic elements that clashed with each other and in a song that featured so many steep melodic changes, this was something that just didn’t really work for me. ‘My Apartment Is My Friend,’ featured the same issue, just in a more minor dose. There’s this break that occurs at 1:54, and during this section, these robotic, electronic effects are thrown into the mix of strings, horns and percussion. On a track like ‘Everybody Laughs,’ I feel like these combinations work really well, perfectly mixing in to the fun and dance-y vibe intended. However, here it’s just too much, all at once, and for me, it took me out of a track that I was otherwise enjoying up until then.

These were definitely ‘Who Is The Sky?’s’ biggest problems for me. Though minor to some, the spouts of over-production and clashing melodies often broke the immersion for me. Was this the intent, however? Maybe. David Byrne has already created some of the most unique pop/alternative/rock music of the 20th and 21st centuries, so it wouldn’t surprise me if Byrne’s goal with this album was to create one of 2025’s most complex releases. If that was the case, then ‘Who Is The Sky?’ is well beyond my musical understanding.

Regardless, the many eccentricities Byrne employs when writing music do shine through here, firmly leaving this album on the ‘good’ side of things, as opposed to the ‘bad.’