David Byrne was born in Dumbarton, Scotland. Two years later, his parents moved to Hamilton, Ontario, and then to Arbutus, Maryland. Before high school, David Byrne already knew how to play the guitar, accordion, and violin. He was rejected from his middle school's choir because they claimed he was "off-key and too withdrawn." From a young age, he had a strong interest in music. His parents say that he would constantly play his phonograph from age three and he learned how to play the harmonica at age five. In his journals he says, "I was a peculiar young man — borderline Asperger's, I would guess." As revealed by Tina Weymouth in the commentary for the concert film Stop Making Sense, Byrne is left handed but plays guitar right handed.
He graduated from Lansdowne High School in southwest Baltimore County. Byrne started his musical career in a high school duo named Bizadi with Mark Kehoe. Their repertoire consisted mostly of songs such as "April Showers," "96 Tears," "Dancing On The Ceiling," and Frank Sinatra songs. Byrne then 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 and forming a band called "The Artistics" with fellow RISD student Chris Frantz. The band dissolved within a year, and the two moved to New York together with Frantz's girlfriend Tina Weymouth. Unable to find a bass player in New York, Frantz and Byrne persuaded Weymouth to learn to play the bass guitar.
After some practice and playing together they founded the group Talking Heads which had its first gig in 1975. Multi-instrumentalist Jerry Harrison joined the group in 1977. The band released 8 studio albums before going into hiatus in 1988. David Byrne desired to go solo, but it took 3 years to announce that the band was breaking up in 1991. A brief reunion for a single "Sax and Violins" in 1991 occurred before again dissolving. The band was inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, when they reunited to play 4 tracks.
During his time in the Talking Heads, 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, two of the songs' component tracks were released under Creative Commons licenses and a remix contest site was launched.
Rei Momo (1989) was the first solo album by Byrne, after leaving Talking Heads, that features mainly Afro-Cuban, Afro-Hispanic, and Brazilian song styles including popular dances including merengue, Cuban Son, samba, mambo, cumbia, cha-cha-chá, bomba, and charanga. His third solo album Uh-Oh (1992) followed that featured a brass-section and was driven by catchy tracks such as "Girls on My Mind" and "The Cowboy Mambo (Hey Lookit Me Now)". His fourth solo album, titled davidenryb (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 #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.
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.
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 September 2012, Byrne and St. Vincent released a collaborative album, Love This Giant.
In 1981, 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. In Spite of Wishing and Wanting is a soundscape David Byrne produced for the Belgian choreographer Wim Vandekeybus's dance company Ultima Vez.
In 1991, Byrne released a classical instrumental album The Forest, where some of the tracks were already featured as a score for 1988 Robert Wilson theatre piece of the same name.
His work has been extensively used in movie soundtracks, most notably in collaboration with Ryuichi Sakamoto and Cong Su on Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which won an Academy Award for Best Original Score. In 2004, Lead Us Not Into Temptation (music from the film "Young Adam") included tracks and musical experiments from his score to Young Adam. Byrne also wrote, directed, and starred in True Stories, a musical collage of discordant Americana released in 1986, as well as producing most of the film's music. Byrne also directed the documentary Île Aiye and the concert film of his 1992 Latin-tinged tour titled Between the Teeth. He was chiefly responsible for the stage design and choreography of Stop Making Sense in 1984. Byrne added "Loco de Amor" (Crazy for Love) with Celia Cruz to Jonathan Demme's 1986 film Something Wild.
Byrne wrote the Dirty Dozen Brass Band-inspired score for Robert Wilson's Opera The Knee Plays from The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down. Some of the music from Byrne's orchestral album The Forest was originally used in a Wilson-directed theatre piece with the same name. The Forest premiered at the Theater der Freien Volksbühne, Berlin in 1988. It received its New York premiere in December 1988 at BAM, the Brooklyn Academy of Music. The Forestry Maxi-single contained dance and industrial remixes of pieces from The Forest by Jack Dangers, Rudy Tambala, and Anthony Capel.
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 February 3, 2007.
In 2008 Byrne released Big Love: Hymnal – his soundtrack to season two of Big Love. These two albums constituted the first releases on his personal independent record label Todo Mundo.
Byrne and Brian Eno provided the soundtrack for the film Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.
Byrne has contributed songs to five AIDS benefit compilation albums produced by the Red Hot Organization: Red Hot + Blue: A Tribute to Cole Porter, Red Hot + Rio, Silencio=Muerte: Red Hot + Latin, Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon, and Offbeat: A Red Hot Soundtrip. Byrne appeared as a guest vocalist/guitarist for 10,000 Maniacs during their MTV Unplugged concert, though the songs in which he is featured were cut from their following album. One of them, "Let the Mystery Be", appeared as the fourth track on 10,000 Maniacs' CD single "Few and Far Between". Byrne worked with the "Queen of Tex-Mex", Tejano superstar Selena, writing, producing and singing a song ("God's Child (Baila Conmigo)"), included on Selena's last album, "Dreaming of You", before her death. Byrne 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 1997.
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 (not included in SP2 installs).
In 2002, he co-wrote and provided vocals for a track, "Lazy" by X-Press 2, which reached number 2 in the United Kingdom and number 1 on the U.S. Dance Charts. Byrne said in an interview in BBC Four Sessions's coverage of his Union Chapel performance that "Lazy" was number 1 in Syria. The track later featured with orchestral arrangements on his Grown Backwards (2004) album.
In 2006, his singing was featured on "The Heart's a Lonely Hunter" on The Cosmic Game by Thievery Corporation.
He is featured on the tracks "Money" and "The People Tree", on N.A.S.A.'s 2009 album The Spirit of Apollo. Also in 2009, David Byrne 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, Byrne 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.
In 2007, David Byrne provided a cover of The Fiery Furnaces' song "Ex-Guru" for a compilation to celebrate the 15th birthday of Thrill Jockey, a Chicago-based label.
In 2008, Byrne and his production team turned the Battery Maritime Building, a 99-year-old ferry terminal in Manhattan, into a playable musical instrument. The structure was connected electronically to a pipe organ and made playable for a piece called "Playing the Building". This project was previously installed in Stockholm, Sweden in 2005, and later at the London Roundhouse in 2009. It bears similarities to a series of installations created by New Zealand and Detroit based artists Alastair Galbraith and Matt De Genaro, which were recorded on their 1998 record Wire Music and on the 2006 follow-up Long Wires in Dark Museums, Vol. 2. Byrne says that the point of the project was to allow people to experience art first hand, by creating music with the organ, rather than simply looking at it.
In April 2008, Byrne took part in the Paul Simon retrospective concert series at BAM performing "You Can Call Me Al" and "I Know What I Know" from Simon's Graceland album.
In 2008 Byrne collaborated with The Brighton Port Authority, composing the music and singing the lyrics for "Toe Jam".
In May 2011, Byrne contributed backing vocals to the Arcade Fire track "Speaking in Tongues" which appeared on the deluxe edition of their 2010 album The Suburbs.
In March 2013 he will debut 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 it's premiere at MoCA earlier in the year.
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 Chango.
In 2005, Byrne 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.
In 2006, Byrne released Arboretum, a sketchbook facsimile of his Tree Drawings, published by McSweeney's. Byrne is also a visual artist whose work has been shown in contemporary art galleries and museums around the world since the 1990s. Represented by the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, he has also created public art installations, many of them anonymously. In 2010 his original art work was in the exhibition The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University.
While working on the film True Stories, Byrne met costume designer Adelle Lutz whom he married in 1987. They have a daughter, Malu Abeni Valentine Byrne, born in 1989. Byrne and Lutz divorced in 2004. Byrne had a relationship with the artist Cindy Sherman from 2007 to 2011.
Although a resident of the United States since childhood, Byrne is a British citizen,[26] and only recently[clarification needed] applied for U.S. citizenship. He lives in New York City.
Cycling [edit]
Byrne is known for his activism in support of increased cycling, and for having used a bike as his main means of transport for most of his life, especially cycling around New York. He has a regular cycling column in the New York Times, and does not own a car.
He says that he cycled when he was in high school and returned to it as an adult in the late 1970s. He likes the freedom and exhilarating feeling cycling gives him. He has written widely on cycling, including a 2009 book, Bicycle Diaries. In August 2009, he auctioned his Montague folding bike in order to raise money for the London Cycling Campaign.
In 2008, Byrne designed a series of bicycle parking racks in the form of image outlines corresponding to the areas in which they were located, such as a dollar sign for Wall Street and an electric guitar in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Byrne worked with a manufacturer that would construct the racks in exchange for the chance to sell them later as artworks, and the racks remained on the streets for about a year.
His most recent release, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, is also his first collaboration with Brian Eno in 30 years. You can stream the full album or download an MP3 at EverythingThatHappens.com.
David maintains a frequently updated journal/blog. A detailed official bio and discography are available on his website.
His song "Like Humans Do" was featured in many installations of Microsoft Windows XP.
You & Eye
David Byrne Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
You & I go straight to hell
Where they have barbeque & beer
Better than they do up here
And you know all the words to the songs
Yeah--we smoke cigarettes
They're soft to the touch
We drink way too much
And Darling, I think you'll like it here
You might like it here
you & I we ain't no saints
You & eye we can see our fates
We'll be the faces in the clouds
We'll be a gospel singer's shout
We'll be the lights from an airplane
at night
Hey yeah--I can't stay in my skin
I been in here too long
But I know where to find, a really good
time
And darlin' I think you'll like it here
You might like it here
I'm gonna fall in love
With everyone I meet
And everyone I see
And everything I touch
And everything I feel
Isn't that the way
It's supposed to be?
Isn't that the way
It's supposed to be?
I'm the look upon your face
The water on your lawn
The light from distant stars
The wreckage of a plane
The space between your teeth
The itch you cannot scratch
The mentally unfit
The pimple on your lip
Isn't that the way
It's supposed to be?
Isn't that the way
It's supposed to be?
Isn't that the way
It's supposed to be?
Isn't that the way
I'm the ice cube in your glass
A busted Cadillac
The garden of delight
The joker in your deck
It ain't in what I feel
No, it ain't in what I say
And the pleasure of a kiss
It never fades away
Isn't that the way
It's supposed to be?
Isn't that the way
It's supposed to be?
Isn't that the way
It's supposed to be?
Isn't that the way
You & I
In “You & Eye,” David Byrne is exploring the themes of mortality, sin, and the afterlife. The song begins with the lyrics “You & I may kill ourselves, You & I go straight to hell,” which suggests a disregard for the consequences of one's actions in the present. Byrne talks about the allure of the afterlife, where there is “barbecue & beer, better than they do up here,” seducing his lover into believing that they would like it there better. As the song progresses, he admits that they are not saints but can see their fates and will become the faces in the clouds, the lights from an airplane at night, and the shout of a gospel singer.
The chorus, “Isn't that the way it's supposed to be?” shows a sense of inevitability and acceptance of their chosen path, and the repetition serves to emphasize the acceptance of their circumstances. The line “I’m gonna fall in love with everyone I meet and everything I touch” is a commentary on the hedonistic and pleasure-seeking lifestyle that the couple has chosen to live. The final section of the song has Byrne listing off different things he represents, including a pimple on her lip and the ice cube in her glass, which reinforces the idea that they are a part of the fabric of the universe.
Overall, “You & Eye” is a deep and introspective song that reflects on the destructive and self-indulgent nature of humanity, as well as the possibility of finding peace and acceptance in the afterlife.
Line by Line Meaning
You & I may kill ourselves
We are capable of doing things that can lead to our own destruction.
You & I go straight to hell
We may end up in a place of eternal punishment and suffering after we die.
Where they have barbeque & beer
Hell might offer pleasures like barbeque and beer, things that one might not be able to have in heaven.
Better than they do up here
Such pleasures might not be as easily accessible in heaven as they are in hell.
And you know all the words to the songs
You are well-versed in the language, culture, and music of the place where we live.
Yeah--we smoke cigarettes
We are aware of the harmful effects of smoking but still indulge in it.
We dance with the dead
We associate with people who are no longer alive, implying that we have cultivated relationships with the past.
They're soft to the touch
Despite being dead, they seem to have a certain quality that is gentle and approachable.
We drink way too much
We consume excessive amounts of alcohol, often to mask or numb our pain.
And Darling, I think you'll like it here
Despite our self-destructive tendencies, I feel that you might enjoy being with me and indulging in these excesses.
You might like it here
I am hopeful that you will enjoy being with me, despite our nihilistic tendencies.
you & I we ain't no saints
We are not perfect, and we often engage in behaviours that are seen as sinful or immoral.
You & eye we can see our fates
We are aware that our actions can have consequences that affect our lives and afterlives.
We'll be the faces in the clouds
Our faces will be immortalized in the sky, creating a reminder of our existence long after we die.
We'll be a gospel singer's shout
Our impact on the world might inspire someone to sing about us, and our stories and struggles.
We'll be the lights from an airplane at night
Our presence in the world might be like the fleeting lights of an airplane, both beautiful yet impermanent.
Hey yeah--I can't stay in my skin
I am restless and uncomfortable, and I yearn for something beyond what I currently have.
I been in here too long
I have been feeling this way for a while, and I can no longer ignore it.
But I know where to find, a really good time
Despite my restlessness, I know how to seek out pleasures and joys that can distract me from my discomfort.
I'm gonna fall in love
I am going to let myself be moved and touched by the people, things, and experiences that I encounter.
With everyone I meet
I am open to experiencing love with all kinds of people, regardless of their background, beliefs, or status.
And everyone I see
I see the beauty and goodness in everyone, and I am capable of loving them even if they don't return the favour.
And everything I touch
I am capable of connecting with the world and having a sense of intimacy and bond with everything around me.
And everything I feel
I am not afraid of my emotions, and I embrace them fully, even if they are difficult or painful.
Isn't that the way It's supposed to be?
Isn't this how we are meant to experience life- with love, openness, and vulnerability?
I'm the look upon your face
I am a part of your life, and I influence your thoughts, actions, and emotions.
The water on your lawn
I am a part of the natural world that surrounds you and sustains you.
The light from distant stars
I am a reminder of the vastness and mystery of the universe, and how we are connected to it.
The wreckage of a plane
I am also a reminder of the fragility and unpredictability of life, and how everything can change in an instant.
The space between your teeth
I am a reminder of the imperfections and quirks that make you unique and beautiful.
The itch you cannot scratch
I am also a reminder of the things you desire, but cannot have- the holes and gaps in your life that you wish to fill.
The mentally unfit
I am also a reminder of the people who are struggling with their mental health, and who need our compassion, understanding, and support.
The pimple on your lip
I am a reminder of the small, mundane things that make up our lives- things that we often ignore or overlook.
I'm the ice cube in your glass
I am also a part of the pleasures and comforts of life- the cold, refreshing drink that cools you down on a hot day.
A busted Cadillac
I am also a part of the beauty and nostalgia of the past- the vintage car that has seen better days but still retains its allure and charm.
The garden of delight
I am also a part of the natural world that brings us joy, beauty, and peace- the garden that nourishes our senses and feeds our soul.
The joker in your deck
I am also the playful and unpredictable part of life- the joker in the deck that always surprises us and keeps us on our toes.
It ain't in what I feel
Happiness and pleasure are not just about our inner feelings and emotions, but also about the world around us, the people we connect with, and the experiences we have.
No, it ain't in what I say
Words alone cannot capture the depth and breadth of human experience and connection, they are just one aspect of it.
And the pleasure of a kiss
The simple joys and pleasures of life- like a kiss from someone we care about- are what make life worth living.
It never fades away
These joys and pleasures are not fleeting, but enduring- they stay with us long after the moment has passed.
Lyrics © Warner Chappell Music, Inc.
Written by: DAVID BYRNE
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind