[Update 6/10/25]: While Talking Heads fans spent last week in the throes of a familiar cycle of vague announcement breadcrumbs, ensuing 50th-anniversary reunion speculation, and eventual deflation when the 68-date world tour set to expand upon the pioneering stage production of his last chapter. There’s lots to discuss. Let’s get into it…
[Note: A version of this article titled “What We Know So Far About The New David Byrne Album” was originally published on Wednesday, June 4th. We have since made various updates as new information has become available.]
David Byrne has not released a new solo album or gone on tour since 2018.
In recent years, David Byrne has issued various assorted singles, remixes, and collaborations and composed the music for the innovative (though short-lived) 2023 Imelda Marcos musical, Here Lies Love, but his last new studio album came seven long years ago via the widely acclaimed American Utopia.
Last time David Byrne did a new album, he did it big.
The shelf-life of the last album’s relevance was much longer than your typical album cycle. Following American Utopia‘s release, David Byrne launched an extensive, similarly acclaimed tour featuring uniquely theatrical, mobility-oriented staging and a stark background made of hanging metal chains. He followed that with an American Utopia tour live EP, film adaptation of the Broadway production, and so on.
In many ways, the music and live presentation of American Utopia were part of a single creative vision, largely inextricable from one another. Presenting works in such a multimedia-oriented fashion is nothing new for Byrne; after all, Talking Heads’ visually striking Stop Making Sense (1984) has been hailed for decades as one of the greatest and most unique concert films of all time.
The tour sounds like it will be just as big a spectacle.
On Tuesday, David Byrne revealed the details for both the new album and a lengthy world tour in its . Judging by Byrne’s description, it looks like it will be just as ambitious as his last outing: “The tour concept is unlike anything I’ve done before,” he wrote on social media. “We’ll keep the mobility that was a key element of the American Utopia tour and Broadway show— but instead of the chain… we will have locations. You’ll just have to come and experience what that involves.”
Byrne just made a telling appearance at a high-profile festival.
Byrne’s live appearances have been relatively scarce and widely varied since his elongated American Utopia era wound down. His last full tour, which came in of American Utopia, came to a close almost seven years ago. But ahead of the official announcement, he began ramping up his presence on notable stages.
On Saturday, June 7th, he made national headlines when he ed 22-year-old pop-punk it-girl Olivia Rodrigo during her headlining performance at Governors Ball Music Festival for a take on Talking Heads favorite “Burning Down the House”. While you could have taken that appearance at face value as a fitting Big Apple homage to an NYC legend by a young fan who happens to be a big star in her own right, it also worked nicely as a (very) high-profile opportunity for a rockstar who’s been laying relatively low to make a public impact right before launching his own new thing—and for the record, he looked and sounded as energetic and engaging as ever up there next to a singer more than half a century his junior.
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The new album’s optimistic themes date back to the pandemic.
According to a press release, Byrne began compiling lyric ideas and phrases for possible songs during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I’ve found that when the time comes, it’s easier to start if there’s a little stockpile – and before too long there was,” Byrne explained. “Very rudimentary songs began to emerge, with just me on acoustic guitar singing over a programmed loop or beat.”
With his then in-progress American Utopia Broadway run—and the world at large—on pause, the ever-cheerful Byrne, per the press release, “took the opportunity to ask, ‘Do I like what I’m doing? Why am I writing songs, or working this job, or whatever? Does any of it matter?’ Byrne’s attempts to answer those weighty questions can be found on Who Is The Sky?, which builds upon the optimistic themes laid out by American Utopia and its ing tour, and more specifically spelled out by the Grammy-winning Broadway show and subsequent movie. With this offering, Byrne continues his lifelong exploration of human connection and the potential for societal unity against the chaotic backdrop of the world.
“Who Is the Sky? is particularly cinematic, humorous and joyful, but often with a lesson baked in,” the description continues, “that love is unexplainable, that enlightenment means very different things to different people and that it’s always a good idea to moisturize, whether you wake up the next morning with skin like a baby or not. Most importantly, the songs evince Byrne’s gift for riding the razor’s edge of avant-garde and accessible pop.
“Mixed by Mark ‘Spike’ Stent and mastered by Emily Lazar, the finished product is about both hiding and revealing, or as Byrne puts it, ‘a chance to be the mythical creature we all harbor inside. A chance to step into another reality. A chance to transcend and escape from the prison of our ‘selves.’’”
The new album is “a collaboration with producer Kid Harpoon and Ghost Train Orchestra.”
Byrne was inspired to enlist Ghost Train Orchestra for the album after hearing the avant-garde jazz orchestra’s 2023 tribute album to the blind New York composer and street poet Moondog, and later that year jumped on stage with the group during a Brooklyn performance. Enticed by the 15-member Ghost Train’s varied instrumental lineup—which includes drums, percussion, guitar and bass along with strings, winds, and brass—Byrne asked if they’d want to serve as his band for the Who Is The Sky? sessions.
“David sent me some demos and asked us to put together some orchestral ideas,” explained Ghost Train Orchestra leader Brian Carpenter in the press release. “Curtis Hasselbring and I quickly wrote a couple rough draft arrangements of his songs for Ghost Train, including ‘My Apartment Is My Friend’, which was the first song we rehearsed at our tiny rehearsal space in Chinatown. To hear him singing with us for the first time on that song was just incredible.”
In April 0f 2024, David Byrne ed Ghost Train Orchestra and Kronos Quartet during a show at New York’s Town Hall for a performance of “Be a Hobo”, one of the tracks reinterpreted on GTO/KQ’s Moondog tribute album. Watch a clip of the performance below.
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About a month later, on May 26th, 2024, Ghost Train Orchestra posted a batch of photos from an unspecified NYC studio with the caption, “David Byrne with Ghost Train Orchestra and producer Kid Harpoon hunkered down in the studio this past week recording all incredible new songs by David with GTO arrangements. Very exciting!” In September of 2024, GTO posted another batch of the 21-piece with the caption, “David Byrne with Ghost Train Orchestra wrapped up a run of David’s incredible songs with GTO arrangements with producer Kid Harpoon. What an adventure!”
Check out a photo of the full ensemble below including, from left to right, Brian Montgomery, Ben Miller, David Cossin, Michael Hickey, Matt Bauder, Brandon Seabrook, Emily Bookwalter, Alex Waterman, Dennis Lichtman, Andy Laster, Curtis Hasselbring, Sara Caswell, Chris Lightcap, Brian Carpenter, Ron Caswell, Brian Rajaratnam, Kid Harpoon, [front row] David Byrne, Rob Garcia, Katie Kresek, Sara Schoenbeck.
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The album’s producer, Kid Harpoon, is one of the most successful pop producers/songwriters of this decade.
Kid Harpoon’s involvement in the new David Byrne album is notable, as well. The British songwriter, record producer, and musician born Thomas Hull may be the most successful musician of the 2020s whose name you don’t know. In 2023, he won a Grammy Award for Album of the Year and a Brit Award for Songwriter of the Year for his work as a producer and primary songwriter on Harry Styles‘ Harry’s House. That same year, he and frequent collaborator Tyler Johnson co-produced Miley Cyrus‘ “Flowers”, which went on to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 2024. With Styles’ “As It Was” and Cyrus’ “Flowers”, Kid Harpoon was the co-producer of the best-selling single in the world in both 2022 and 2023.
According to the press release, Kid Harpoon came into the Who Is The Sky? picture when he was introduced to Byrne at a party by a friend. “Sometimes things do happen at parties,” Byrne noted. “I knew this could all get complicated and I also wanted to be sure the recordings sounded as good as possible. An outside set of ears can be super helpful. A few artists I knew had worked with Kid Harpoon, and I thought those records sounded really good.” After hearing some initial demos, he jumped aboard.
Byrne says there are “more story songs than usual” on Who Is The Sky?
Byrne referred to several of the album’s songs as “mini-narratives based on personal experience.” Per the official album announcement, that list includes “‘She Explains Things to Me’ (‘How come it’s all so obvious to her?’), ‘A Door Called No’ (which magically opens after Byrne receives a kiss), ‘My Apartment Is My Friend’ (‘you’ve seen me at my very worst / but we always get along’), and ‘I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party’ (at which the onetime spiritual guru is more interested in the unhealthy desserts than deification).”
“I suspected that intimate orchestral arrangements would bring out the emotion I sense is there in these songs,” said Byrne. “It’s something that folks don’t always hear in my work, but this time for sure I thought it was there. At the same time, I also see myself as someone who aspires to be accessible. I imagined that Kid Harpoon would help with that, as well as being a set of trusted ears, since there was a lot going on. People think of producers as people who mainly make a record sound good, and Kid Harpoon did that, but he was also aware of how important the storytelling is.
“At my age, at least for me, there’s a ‘don’t give a shit about what people think’ attitude that kicks in,” Byrne explained. “I can step outside my comfort zone with the knowledge that I kind of know who I am by now and sort of know what I’m doing. That said, every new set of songs, every song even, is a new adventure. There’s always a bit of, ‘how do I work this?’ I’ve found that not every collaboration works, but often when they do, it’s because I’m able to clearly impart what it is I’m trying to do. They hopefully get that, and as a result, we’re now ed together heading to the same unknown place.”
It also features contributions from a number of Byrne’s famous friends.
In addition to Kid Harpoon and Ghost Train Orchestra, David Byrne tapped various familiar collaborators to appear on Who Is The Sky?
St. Vincent—with whom Byrne released a t album, Love This Giant, in 2012—s the chorus of voices at the end of “Everybody Laughs”, the album’s lead single. “‘Someone I know said, “David, you use the word ‘everybody’ a lot.” I suppose I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it,’ says Byrne. ‘Everybody lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps and stares at the ceiling. Everybody’s wearing everybody else’s shoes, which not everybody does, but I have done. I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way balanced by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering and singing together. Music can do that—hold opposites simultaneously. I realized that when singing with Robyn earlier this year. Her songs are often sad, but the music is joyous.'”
Below, watch the Gabriel Barcia-Colombo-directed music video for “Everybody Laughs”, the lead single from forthcoming David Byrne album Who Is The Sky?
David Byrne, Ghost Train Orchestra – “Everybody Laughs” (Official Music Video)
Paramore’s Hayley Williams, who notably released a cover of Talking Heads’ “Burning Down The House” last year, is credited as a featured artist on the album’s fifth track. As the announcement press release notes, “Marked by the inviting vocal interplay between Byrne and Paramore’s Williams, the jaunty ‘What Is the Reason for It?’ aims to codify love in a way logic can rarely accomplish (‘does it do something useful? / nobody understands it’), while ‘The Avant Garde’ wrestles with the merits of art for art’s sake (‘it’s ahead of the curve / it’s deceptively weighty, profound, absurd / it’s whatever fits’) – a meta observation if ever there was one from one of the most iconoclastic artists to emerge from the New York rock underground.”
The Smile drummer Tom Skinner and American Utopia percussionist Mauro Refosco also ed the ensemble late in the game.
The album’s 12 tracks are titled:
- Everybody Laughs
- When We Are Singing
- My Apartment Is My Friend
- A Door Called No
- What Is the Reason for It? (ft. Hayley Williams)
- I Met the Buddha at a Downtown Party
- Don’t Be Like That
- The Avant Garde
- Moisturizing Thing
- I’m an Outsider
- She Explains Things to Me
- The Truth
It’s available for pre-order in various vinyl formats now.
David Byrne and Matador Records will release Who Is The Sky? on September 5th, 2025 via streaming platforms as well as a variety of physical formats, including a limited Cantaloupe Orange / Strawberry Pink split vinyl featuring a lenticular cover. Pre-order your vinyl copy or pre-save the album on digital platforms here.
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