“Take Me to the River” occupies a unique place in the Talking Heads catalogue: it is their biggest early hit, and the only cover song they ever officially recorded. Originally written by Al Green and his guitarist Teenie Hodges in 1974, the song was rooted in Southern soul and gospel imagery. Few could have predicted that a New York art-rock band would deliver its most commercially successful interpretation.
Al Green’s original recording, released on “Al Green Explores Your Mind”, was steeped in spiritual metaphor, using baptism as both religious symbol and emotional cleansing. Although Green’s version wasn’t a hit, the song circulated widely in R&B circles and inspired multiple covers. It took Talking Heads to carry it into the new wave mainstream, where it reached No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1979—higher than any previous version.
Initially, David Byrne resisted recording the song, believing the band should focus exclusively on original material, but producer Brian Eno convinced him otherwise, framing the cover not as homage but as transformation. Eno’s key instruction was radical in its simplicity: play it as slowly as possible. That decision reshaped the song.
Unlike the expressive warmth of Al Green’s take, the Talking Heads version is deliberately restrained, tense, and seductive. The slowed tempo gives the track a simmering intensity, turning the familiar gospel plea into something uneasy and hypnotic. The groove barely moves forward, creating a sense of ritual—appropriate for a song about baptism, surrender, and rebirth.
Byrne’s vocal performance is crucial. He does not sing like a soul preacher; instead, he inhabits the role, sounding detached and anxious, as though unsure whether salvation is coming or something more dangerous. That ambiguity makes the song feel modern, even unsettling, and foreshadows Byrne’s later sermon-like delivery on “Once in a Lifetime.”
Released as the only single from “More Songs About Buildings and Food”, “Take Me to the River” became Talking Heads’ first major commercial breakthrough, earning them a coveted spot on American Bandstand and introducing the band to a national audience. While the group never positioned themselves as hit-makers, this single proved that boundary-pushing music could still connect widely.
The track also marked the strengthening collaboration between Talking Heads and Brian Eno. Recorded at the newly opened Compass Point Studios in Nassau, the sessions were marked by experimentation and mythology—Island Records founder Chris Blackwell famously surrounded the studio grounds with chicken blood to ward off evil spirits. Whether coincidence or voodoo, the result was an album—and a song—that helped define the band’s artistic direction.
TALKING HEADS - WILD WILD LIFE
Released: August 1986
Charts: US: #25 UK: #43
Released in August 1986 as the lead single from “True Stories”, “Wild Wild Life” feels deceptively light—almost novelty pop at first blush—yet it quietly continues David Byrne’s long-running fascination with American identity, absurdity, and the thin line between observer and participant.
“Wild Wild Life” is buoyant and kinetic, driven by a taut rhythm section and a chant-like hook that lodges itself immediately in the ear. It’s one of the band’s most approachable singles, explaining why it became their third—and final—Top 40 hit in the US. But accessibility has never meant simplicity for Talking Heads. Beneath the playful surface lies a sly piece of social satire, delivered with Byrne’s trademark deadpan curiosity.
Written for Byrne’s film “True Stories”, the song doubles as both theme and commentary. Its narrator is an eccentric drifter—dressed in fur pajamas, sleeping by the interstate—yet he positions himself as a spectator, marveling at the supposed normalcy of doctors, stockbrokers, and businessmen. In Byrne’s upside-down worldview, it’s the suit-and-tie professionals who live the truly “wild” lives. The joke, as ever with Talking Heads, is on our assumptions about success, stability, and sanity.
The accompanying video, embedded into the fabric of “True Stories”, perfectly amplifies this idea. Set as a lip-sync contest in the fictional town of Virgil, Texas, it turns everyday Americana into performance art. Each towns-person mouths a line of the song, transforming banality into spectacle. For a band reportedly strained by internal tensions at the time, the video is unusually loose and joyful, with Byrne allowing his bandmates to lean into exaggerated personas—heavy metal screamers, country crooners, zoot-suited hustlers—like a carnival mirror reflection of American pop culture.
“Wild Wild Life” also crystallizes Talking Heads’ role as new wave’s sharpest satirists. As critic Bill Martin once noted, if punk was the howl of the outsider, Talking Heads represented “the revenge of the nerds.” Here, that revenge is playful rather than angry, observational rather than confrontational. Byrne doesn’t shout; he points, smiles, and lets the absurdity speak for itself.
In hindsight, the song feels like a farewell wave disguised as a party. It captures the band at their most accessible while still unmistakably strange—a pop hit that laughs at the very systems that define normal life. Talking Heads would never chart this high again, but with “Wild Wild Life,” they left behind a perfect summary of their art: curious, ironic, and dancing cheerfully at the edge of American weirdness.
TALKING HEADS - (NOTHING BUT) FLOWERS
Released: October 3, 1988
Charts: UK: #79
Released in 1988 as a single from “Naked”, the final studio album by Talking Heads, “(Nothing But) Flowers” stands as one of the band’s last great statements—ironic, restless, and musically borderless. It’s a song that captures everything the group did best: wry social observation, global influences, and the uneasy humor of David Byrne’s worldview.
At the time of “Naked”, Talking Heads were already drifting apart. Byrne’s growing slate of solo and collaborative projects had long strained the band’s internal dynamics, leaving his bandmates unsure if Talking Heads still existed except in name. That tension makes the song even more striking: it’s a vibrant, almost jubilant piece created at a moment of deep uncertainty.
Produced with Steve Lillywhite, the song features an expanded cast of musicians, including percussionists from West Africa, singer Kirsty MacColl, and—on lead guitar—Johnny Marr, fresh off his departure from The Smiths. Marr’s shimmering 12-string lines give the track its nervous sparkle; he has recalled that what became the song’s iconic introduction was recorded accidentally while he was warming up, unaware the tape was rolling.
In a reversal of the “pave paradise” lament popularized by Joni Mitchell, Byrne imagines a post-apocalyptic Eden where nature has reclaimed everything. Parking lots are now meadows, shopping malls have become forests, and the conveniences of late-20th-century consumer life—fast food, lawnmowers, highways—are extinct. The narrator is divided: he marvels at the beauty of the natural world while complaining that he misses the comforts of civilization. It’s funny, but also uncomfortably familiar. Byrne skewers our environmental hypocrisy decades before it became mainstream conversation.
The song’s music video, directed by Byrne and Sandy McLeod, was ahead of its time. Featuring bold, experimental typography by Tibor Kalman and Emily Oberman, the visuals overlay declarative text and fragments of lyrics as the band performs with its full expanded lineup. It is both playful and cerebral, a design piece as much as a music video.
TALKING HEADS - AND SHE WAS
Released: August 1985
Charts: US:#54 UK: #17.
“And She Was” is a bright, buoyant moment on their 1985 album “Little Creatures” that disguises its strangeness behind jangling guitars and pop accessibility. Written and sung by David Byrne, the track became a modest chart success, reaching No. 54 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and No. 17 in the UK. At heart, “And She Was” is about escape without leaving, transcendence without grandeur, and spiritual awakening blooming in thoroughly unglamorous surroundings.
Byrne has repeatedly traced the song’s inspiration to a real woman he knew in Baltimore—someone who used to take LSD and lie in a grassy field bordering a Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink factory. The image struck him as absurd yet deeply resonant. “It seemed like such a tacky kind of transcendence,” Byrne wrote in the liner notes for Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads, “but it was real! A new kind of religion being born out of heaps of rusted cars and fast food joints.”
Crucially, Byrne has always insisted that “And She Was” is not a drug song. Instead, he framed it as a depiction of spontaneous, unprovoked revelation. The girl doesn’t escape from the world—she floats within it. The sublime emerges not from nature untouched, but from highways, factories, schools, and backyard fences. This tension—between beauty and banality—is pure Talking Heads.
Musically, the song mirrors its theme. It floats rather than drives. The rhythm glides, the melody lifts, and Byrne’s vocals are wide-eyed and observational, as though he, too, can’t quite believe what he’s witnessing.
Drummer Chris Frantz framed the narrative as a slightly unbalanced love story: a man watching a woman who can literally rise above her surroundings, while he remains rooted below—both admiring her freedom and wishing she’d be just a little more ordinary. She drifts past rooftops, schools, and yards, while the narrator stays grounded, emotionally and physically. It’s a classic Byrne perspective: the outsider fascinated by someone who refuses to adhere to gravity, social or otherwise.
“And She Was” is inseparable from its music video, directed by Jim Blashfield, whose work drew heavily on the surreal collage techniques of Terry Gilliam. The video marked Blashfield’s first collaboration with Talking Heads and introduced a visual style that would become hugely influential: cut-out animation, layered imagery, and disorienting scale shifts that perfectly mirrored the song’s sense of weightless wonder.
MTV took notice. The video earned nominations for Best Group Video and Best Concept Video, opening the door for Blashfield to bring the same dream logic to other landmark clips, including: Paul Simon’s “The Boy in the Bubble”; Tears for Fears’ “Sowing the Seeds of Love” and Michael Jackson’s “Leave Me Alone”.
In a catalog filled with jittery paranoia and intellectual density, “And She Was” remains one of Talking Heads’ most generous songs. It doesn’t mock its subject. It watches her float, slightly bewildered, slightly in love, and quietly changed by what he’s seen.
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MAXWELL - ASCENSION (DON’T EVER WONDER)
Publicat: 30 de juliol de 1996
Llistes: Regne Unit: #28 · EUA: #36
“Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder)”, publicada el juliol de 1996 i coescrita amb el músic Itaal Shur, va ser el segon senzill de “Urban Hang Suite” i el primer gran èxit de Maxwell, una fusió entre la sensualitat de Marvin Gaye i l’elegància polida de l’escena neo-soul novaiorquesa dels anys noranta.
La cançó va néixer en una habitació atapeïda de Brooklyn, on Maxwell i Shur la van reescriure repetidament fins a trobar la línia de baix adequada. Jonathan Maron, de The Groove Collective, va aportar aquella línia icònica; Stuart Matthewman, de Sade, hi va afegir textures subtils de guitarra; i el mateix Shur es va encarregar dels teclats i la programació de bateria. Maxwell va arribar amb les estrofes, però va tenir dificultats amb els cors, passant per diversos esborranys fins a trobar l’hook que acabaria definint la peça.
Les seves arrels es trobaven en el terreny creatiu i fèrtil del Giant Step, un club de Manhattan on DJs i músics en directe barrejaven acid jazz, funk, hip-hop i soul. El mateix espai també va nodrir artistes com D’Angelo, Erykah Badu i The Brand New Heavies, situant “Ascension” dins una onada cultural més àmplia: l’ascens del neo-soul.
El tema va pujar fins al núm. 8 de la llista R&B/Hip-Hop de Billboard, va assolir el núm. 36 al Hot 100, i es va convertir en una peça imprescindible tant a les ones nord-americanes com a les britàniques. El videoclip, dirigit per Liz Friedlander, reflectia la seducció pausada de la cançó: Maxwell sobre un escenari fosc on la llum l’anava revelant a ell i a la banda, mentre el públic començava a entrar i a ballar.
MAXWELL - ASCENSION (DON’T EVER WONDER)
Released: July 30, 1996
Charts: UK: #28 US: #36
“Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder)”, released in July 1996 and co-written with musician Itaal Shur, was the second single from Maxwell’s “Urban Hang Suite” and his first major hit, blending the sensual soul of Marvin Gaye with the sleek polish of New York’s ’90s neo-soul scene.
The song was born in a cramped Brooklyn room, where Maxwell and Shur reworked it repeatedly until they landed on the right bassline. Jonathan Maron of The Groove Collective delivered that now-iconic line, Stuart Matthewman from Sade added subtle guitar textures, and Shur himself handled keyboards and drum programming. Maxwell came in with the verses, but struggled with the chorus, cycling through several drafts before finding the hook that would define the song.
Its roots lay in the fertile creative grounds of Giant Step, a Manhattan club where DJs and live musicians fused acid jazz, funk, hip-hop, and soul. The same scene nurtured D’Angelo, Erykah Badu, and The Brand New Heavies, making “Ascension” part of a larger cultural wave — the rise of neo-soul.
The track climbed to No. 8 on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop chart, reached No. 36 on the Hot 100, and became a staple on both American and UK airwaves. Its Liz Friedlander–directed video matched the song’s slow-burn seduction, placing Maxwell on a dim stage where light gradually revealed him and the band as the crowd poured in and began to dance.
VIOLA WILLS – GONNA GET ALONG WITHOUT YA NOW
Publicació: 1979
Posició: Regne Unit: núm. 8
Hi ha cançons que viuen una sola vida, lligades per sempre a la veu que les va fer famoses. D’altres, com “Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now” de Milton Kellem, en viuen una dotzena —canviant de forma al llarg de dècades de swing, pop, country i disco—, reflectint en cada versió el so de la seva època. Escrita i publicada el 1951, la peça va començar com una petita curiositat alegre, però amb els anys es va convertir en un himne de resistència: una cançó de desamor amb un toc murri i decidit que mai no ha desaparegut del tot de les ones radiofòniques.
La primera gravació va arribar el 1951 de la mà de Roy Hogsed, però va ser la versió de Teresa Brewer, amb el seu estil swing i el seu to divertit, la que va consolidar l’atractiu de la cançó a principis dels anys cinquanta. Amb la seva veu lluminosa i juvenil, Brewer convertia la lletra en una picada d’ullet més que no pas en una lamentació —menys cor trencat i més “tant se me’n dóna”. Però va ser la gravació de Patience and Prudence del 1956, el duet de germanes conegut per les seves harmonies infantils, la que va donar a la cançó el seu primer gran èxit popular: va arribar al número 11 als Estats Units i al número 22 al Regne Unit.
Durant la dècada del 1960, la cançó va passar per mans d’artistes que la van reinterpretar per a nous públics. La versió de Tracey Dey (1964), produïda amb l’estètica “Wall of Sound” de Phil Spector, li va donar un aire explosiu de grup femení; mentre que Skeeter Davis, també el 1964, en va fer una versió country plena de malenconia que va arribar al número 48 del Hot 100. Cada nova lectura demostrava la seva versatilitat: la cançó podia adaptar-se a gairebé qualsevol gènere i seguir funcionant.
La reinvenció més sorprenent arribaria amb l’era del disco. Viola Wills, una cantant nascuda a Los Angeles i descoberta per Barry White a mitjans dels seixanta, havia passat anys treballant com a vocalista de suport abans de fer el pas al primer pla. El 1979, va enregistrar una vibrant versió disco de “Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now” que es convertiria en el seu gran èxit. Les línies de baix i els arranjaments de corda van transformar la lletra de Kellem en un himne de lliberació a la pista de ball: el missatge senzill d’independència prenia ara una nova força, plena de confiança i energia. El single va triomfar arreu d’Europa i va donar a conèixer la cançó a tota una nova generació.
La pròpia Wills era una encarnació d’aquesta capacitat de reinventar-se. Mare de sis fills abans dels 21 anys, va fer gires amb Joe Cocker com a membre de les seves coristes The Sanctified Sisters, abans d’iniciar una carrera en solitari. Tot i que només tornaria a les llistes britàniques amb “Dare to Dream” / “Both Sides Now”, va mantenir una base de fans fidel dins l’escena Hi-NRG i de la nostàlgia disco, especialment al Regne Unit. La seva versió de “Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now” es va convertir en la seva cançó insígnia: les seves frases sobre seguir endavant s’alineaven perfectament amb l’esperit del disco —supervivència, autoafirmació i alegria malgrat el dolor. Viola Wills va morir el 2009, als 69 anys, però la seva gravació continua sonant en clubs i recopilacions.
VIOLA WILLS - GONNA GET ALONG WITHOUT YA NOW
Released: 1979
Chart Peak: UK: #8
Some songs live a single life, tied forever to the voice that first made them famous. Others, like Milton Kellem’s “Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now,” live a dozen lives—shapeshifting through swing, pop, country, and disco—each new version reflecting the sounds of its moment. Written and published in 1951, the tune began as a jaunty novelty, but over the decades it became a durable standard of resilience, a cheeky breakup anthem that never quite left the airwaves.
The first recording came from Roy Hogsed in 1951, though it was Teresa Brewer’s swinging version that established the song’s appeal in the early ‘50s. With her bright, girlish delivery, Brewer turned the lyric into a carefree wink—less heartbreak, more shrug. But it was the 1956 recording by Patience and Prudence, the sister duo known for their eerie, schoolgirl harmonies, that gave the song its first major pop breakthrough. Their version reached #11 in the US and #22 in the UK.
By the 1960s, the song had entered the hands of artists who reshaped it for new audiences. Tracey Dey’s 1964 Wall of Sound rendition carried Phil Spector’s bombastic girl-group aesthetic, while Skeeter Davis’s country version, also in 1964, gave it a plaintive Nashville twist, reaching #48 on the Hot 100. The adaptability of the song was becoming clear—it could thrive in almost any genre.
The most striking reinvention came in the disco era. Viola Wills, a Los Angeles–born singer discovered by Barry White in the mid-1960s, had spent years as a background vocalist before stepping into the spotlight. In 1979, she recorded a propulsive disco take on “Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now” that became her defining hit. Driving basslines and shimmering strings transformed Kellem’s ditty into a dancefloor liberation anthem—the simple message of independence suddenly pulsed with club-ready confidence. The single became a major European hit, introducing the song to a whole new generation.
Wills herself embodied the reinvention. A mother of six by 21, she later toured as part of Joe Cocker’s backing singers, The Sanctified Sisters, before carving her own solo path. Though her only other UK chart hit came with “Dare to Dream” / “Both Sides Now,” she remained beloved on the Hi-NRG nostalgia circuit, particularly in Britain. Her version of “Gonna Get Along Without Ya Now” became a signature—its move-on lyrics match with the disco ethos of survival, self-definition, and joy despite heartbreak. Wills passed away in 2009 at age 69, but her recording still spins in clubs and retrospectives, a reminder of how a simple pop song can morph into something much bigger.
