David Byrnes

On February 29, 2020, after a 30-year absence, Byrne performed as the musical guest on Saturday Night Live with John Mulaney as host. Byrne performed “Once in a Lifetime” and “Toe Jam” with the cast of the Broadway show American Utopia and appears in the “Airport Sushi” sketch. This was Byrne's third appearance on Saturday Night Live. Byrne previously served as the musical guest as part of the musical group Talking Heads in 1979, and as a solo musical guest in 1989.

In October 2019, his American Utopia opened at the Hudson Theatre on Broadway. The singer appeared in comedian John Mulaney's children's musical comedy special John Mulaney & the Sack Lunch Bunch (2019), where he performed the song “Pay Attention!” His song “Tiny Apocalypse” was also featured as the special's end credits song.

David Byrne was born on 14 May 1952 in Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, the elder of two children born to Tom (from Lambhill, Glasgow) and Emma. Two years after his birth, his parents moved to Canada, settling in Hamilton, Ontario. They then moved to the United States, making their home in Arbutus, Maryland, when Byrne was eight or nine years old. His father worked as an electronics engineer at Westinghouse Electric Corporation. His mother later became a teacher. The family had left Scotland in part because there were few jobs requiring his father's engineering skills and in part because of the tensions in the extended family caused by his parents' “mixed marriage”, his father being Catholic and his mother Presbyterian. Byrne recounted these events when he appeared on Desert Island Discs on BBC Radio 4 on 18 March 2018.

In August 2016, he was featured on “Snoopies” on the Kickstarter-funded album, and the Anonymous Nobody… by De La Soul.

In 2015, he organized Contemporary Color, two arena concerts in Brooklyn (NYC) and in Toronto, for which he brought in ten musical acts who teamed up with ten color guard groups. The concerts were made into a 2016 documentary film, directed by Bill and Turner Ross, and produced by Byrne.

In May 2014, Byrne announced his involvement with Anna Calvi's EP, Strange Weather, collaborating with her on two songs: a cover of Keren Ann's “Strange Weather” and Connan Mockasin's “I'm the Man, That Will Find You”.

In March 2013, he debuted a fully staged production of his 2010 concept album Here Lies Love at New York's Public Theater, directed by Tony Award-nominee Alex Timbers following its premiere at MoCA earlier in the year.

In 2012 he released a collaborative album with American singer-songwriter St. Vincent called Love This Giant.

In May 2011, the musician contributed backing vocals to the Arcade Fire track “Speaking in Tongues” which appeared on the deluxe edition of their 2010 album The Suburbs.

David Byrne has also been a speaker at the TED Talks conferences. In June 2010, he spoke at the TED conference about the effects of architecture on music. Later in October 2010, he performed a hit from Talking Heads's 1988 album Naked titled “(Nothing But) Flowers” along with Thomas Dolby and string quartet Ethel-the TED2010 house band.

David Byrne is featured on the tracks “Money” and “The People Tree”, on N.A.S.A.'s 2009 album The Spirit of Apollo. In 2009, he also appeared on HIV/AIDS charity album Dark Was the Night for Red Hot Organization. He collaborated with Dirty Projectors on the song “Knotty Pine”. In the same year, the musician performed at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in Manchester, Tennessee. He also was a signator of a letter protesting the decision of the Toronto International Film Festival to choose Tel Aviv as the subject of its inaugural City-to-City Spotlight strand.

Byrne and Eno reunited for his eighth album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2008). He assembled a band to tour worldwide for the album for a six-month period from late 2008 through early 2009 on the Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno Tour.

In late 2005, Byrne and Fatboy Slim began work on Here Lies Love, a disco opera or song cycle about the life of Imelda Marcos, the controversial former First Lady of the Philippines. Some music from this piece was debuted at Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia in February 2006 and the following year at Carnegie Hall on 3 February 2007.

In 2006, his singing was featured on “The Heart's a Lonely Hunter” on The Cosmic Game by Thievery Corporation.

In 2005, he initiated his own internet radio station, Radio David Byrne. Each month, Byrne posts a playlist of music he likes, linked by themes or genres. Byrne's playlists have included African popular music, country music classics, vox humana, classical opera and film scores from Italian movies.

Grown Backwards (2004), released by Nonesuch Records, used orchestral string arrangements, and includes two operatic arias as well as a rework of X-Press 2 collaboration “Lazy”. He also launched a North American and Australian tour with the Tosca Strings. This tour ended with Los Angeles, San Diego and New York shows in August 2005. He also collaborated with Selena on her 1995 album Dreaming of You with “God's Child (Baila Conmigo)”.

In 2003, Byrne guest starred as himself on a season 14 episode of The Simpsons. Released the same year, Lead Us Not into Temptation included tracks and musical experiments from his score to film Young Adam (2003).

In 2002, the musician co-wrote and provided vocals for a track, “Lazy” by X-Press 2, which reached No. 2 in the United Kingdom and number-one on the US Dance Charts. He said in an interview on BBC Four Sessions coverage of his Union Chapel performance that “Lazy” was number-one in Syria. The track later featured with orchestral arrangements on his Grown Backwards (2004) album.

In 2001, a version of Byrne's single “Like Humans Do”, edited to remove its drug reference, was selected by Microsoft as the sample music for Windows XP to demonstrate Windows Media Player.

In Spite of Wishing and Wanting is a soundscape the musician produced in 1999 for the Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus's dance company Ultima Vez.

In 1997, he was the host of Sessions at West 54th during its second of three seasons and collaborated with members of Devo and Morcheeba to record the album Feelings.

In 1992, he performed with Richard Thompson. Their joint acoustic concert at St. Ann & The Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights, New York on 24 March, produced the album An Acoustic Evening which was released the same year. Byrne worked with Latin superstar Selena in March 1995; writing, producing and singing a bilingual duet titled “God's Child (Baila Conmigo).” This became the last song Selena recorded before she was murdered on 31 March. It was included on the singer's posthumous album Dreaming of You.

David Byrne founded the world music record label Luaka Bop in 1990. It was originally created to release Latin American compilations, but it has grown to include music from Cuba, Africa, the Far East and beyond, releasing the work of artists such as Cornershop, Os Mutantes, Los De Abajo, Jim White, Zap Mama, Tom Zé, Los Amigos Invisibles and King Changó.

Rei Momo (1989) was the first solo album by Byrne after leaving Talking Heads, and features mainly Afro-Cuban, Afro-Hispanic, and Brazilian song styles, including popular dances such as merengue, son cubano, samba, mambo, cumbia, cha-cha-chá, bomba and charanga. His third solo album, Uh-Oh (1992), featured a brass section and was driven by tracks such as “Girls on My Mind” and “The Cowboy Mambo (Hey Lookit Me Now)”. His fourth solo album, titled David Byrne (1994), was a more proper rock record, with Byrne playing most of the instruments on it, leaving percussion for session musicians. “Angels” and “Back in the Box” were the two main singles released from the album. The first one entered the US Modern Rock Tracks chart, reaching No. 24. For his fifth studio effort the emotional Feelings (1997), Byrne employed a brass orchestra called Black Cat Orchestra. His sixth Look into the Eyeball (2001) continued the same musical exploration of Feelings, but was compiled of more upbeat tracks, like those found on Uh-Oh.

Some of the music from Byrne's orchestral album The Forest was originally used in a Robert Wilson-directed theatre piece with the same name. The play The Forest premiered at the Theater der Freien Volksbühne, Berlin, in 1988. It received its New York premiere in December 1988 at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM). The Forestry Maxi-single contained dance and industrial remixes of pieces from The Forest by Jack Dangers, Rudy Tambala, and Anthony Capel. Byrne released his soundtrack album in 1991.

His work has been extensively used in film soundtracks, most notably in collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su on Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), which won an Academy Award for Best Original Score.

He wrote, directed, and starred in True Stories (1986), a musical collage of discordant Americana, as well as produced most of the film's music. He was impressed by the experimental theatre that he saw in New York City in the 1970s and collaborated with several of its best-known representatives. He worked with Robert Wilson on “The Knee Plays” and “The Forest”, and invited Spalding Gray (of The Wooster Group) to act in True Stories, while Meredith Monk provided a small part of that film's soundtrack. The musician provided a soundtrack for JoAnne Akalaitis' film Dead End Kids (1986), made after a Mabou Mines theatre production. Byrne's artistic outlook has a great deal in common with the work of these artists. The same year he also added “Loco de Amor” with Celia Cruz to Jonathan Demme's film Something Wild (1986).

Byrne wrote the Dirty Dozen Brass Band-inspired score Music for “The Knee Plays”, released in 1985, for Robert Wilson's vast five-act Opera The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down.

He was chiefly responsible for the stage design and choreography of concert film Stop Making Sense (1984).

In 1981, David Byrne partnered with choreographer Twyla Tharp, scoring music he wrote that appeared on his album The Catherine Wheel for a ballet with the same name, prominently featuring unusual rhythms and lyrics. Productions of The Catherine Wheel appeared on Broadway that same year.

During his time in the band, David Byrne took on outside projects, collaborating with Brian Eno during 1979 and 1981 on the album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which attracted considerable critical acclaim due to its early use of analogue sampling and found sounds. Following this record, Byrne focused his attention on Talking Heads. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was re-released for its 25th anniversary in early 2006, with new bonus tracks. In keeping with the spirit of the original album, stems for two of the songs' component tracks were released under Creative Commons licenses and a remix contest websitesite was launched.

By January 1975, they were practicing and playing together, while still working normal day jobs. They founded the band Talking Heads and had their first gig in June. Byrne quit his day job in May 1976 and the three-piece band signed to Sire Records in November. Byrne was the youngest member of the band. Multi-instrumentalist Jerry Harrison joined the band in 1977. The band released eight studio albums before going into hiatus in 1988. Byrne desired to go solo, but it took three years until 1991 to announce that the band was breaking up. The band had a brief reunion for the single “Sax and Violins” in 1991 before dissolving again. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, where they reunited to play four tracks, including “Psycho Killer” and “Burning Down the House”.

Byrne graduated from Lansdowne High School in southwest Baltimore County. He started his musical career in a high school band called Revelation, then between 1971 and 1972, he was one half of a duo named Bizadi with Marc Kehoe. Their repertoire consisted mostly of songs such as “April Showers”, “96 Tears”, “Dancing on the Ceiling” and Frank Sinatra songs. Byrne attended the Rhode Island School of Design (during the 1970–71 term) and the Maryland Institute College of Art (during the 1971–72 term) before dropping out. He returned to Providence in 1973 and formed a band called the Artistics with fellow RISD student Chris Frantz. The band dissolved in 1974. Byrne moved to New York City in May that year, and in September of that year, Frantz and his girlfriend Tina Weymouth followed suit. Unable to find a bass player in New York, Frantz and Byrne persuaded Weymouth to learn to play the bass guitar. Byrne gave her lessons. While working day jobs in late 1974, they were contemplating a band.

He says that he began cycling while he was in high school and returned to it as an adult in the late 1970s. He likes the freedom and exhilaration cycling gives him. He has written widely on cycling, including a 2009 book, Bicycle Diaries. In August 2009, Byrne auctioned his Montague folding bike to raise money for the London Cycling Campaign.

David Byrnes was born in 1952 in Dumbarton, Scotland.