Naked

Certain Songs #2634: Talking Heads – “(Nothing But) Flowers”

June 9, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Naked
Year: 1988

. . .

“Nature is Healing.” For those of us who are terminally online, that’s one of the best meme jokes to come out of COVID. It dates back to those early days where everybody — not everybody, of course — stayed home for a couple of weeks. Almost instantly, people would sincerely post pictures of stuff like dolphins in the canals of Venice or birds in Central Park or some shit with the caption “nature is healing.” Because, you know, the humans aren’t around.

Certain Songs #2633: Talking Heads – “The Facts of Life”

June 8, 2023 by Jim Connelly

Album: Naked
Year: 1988

. . .

After the singer-songwriter orientation that was the focus of both Little Creatures and True Stories, Talking Heads went back to the formula that created Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues for 1988’s Naked: a melange of Latin funk and Afrobeat based on band jams and run through David Byrne’s still-unique sensibilities.

And while Naked was definitely a step above True Stories and (maybe even) Little Creatures or Speaking in Tongues, it didn’t come anywhere close to the groundbreaking heights of Remain in Light, which is as unfair as it is true.