Week 44: 50 Albums That Changed Music

[Swish]

As I'm quickly approaching the end of this list, there is still time for a few more decent choices. This week's selection is by a band that was among my favorites in the last couple decades or so, and they certainly are worthy being chosen as part of this list; Talking Heads - Fear of Music (1979).

There's something refreshingly jolly about the modern-life paranoia expressed by chief Talking Head David Byrne on this album that moany old Radiohead could learn from. Opening track 'I Zimbra' splices funk with afrobeat, paving the way for Byrne and Eno's mould-breaking My Life in the Bush of Ghosts album a few years later. Without this...Paul Simon's Graceland might never have been made.

Well, I don't know where to begin. The author could have made a better case for influence by naming some other bands who this album supposedly influenced, and not just one record by Paul Simon. I don't know if this particular album was influential so much as their entire body of work. I remember being in college when they first came into the limelight, and when we talked about "New Wave", this was one of the bands that defined that genre. Yes, Radiohead (their name was taken from a Talking Heads song if you didn't already know) was one of the bands they influenced, and I think there a number of other current bands that would call them a major influence. Can you name some?

Swish

[Rae]

Well, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah for starters...

[Monkey Bones]

I think there a number of other current bands that would call them a major influence. Can you name some?
Not sure how many bands fully credit the influence of the Talking Heads, but it does seem a major influence to me, having lived through that first wave. Some of it is of course filtered through the Pixies sound, who obviously took much influence from the Heads. Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Dismemberment Plan, Arcade Fire, Rae's pick, Enon, and on and on. Most of those bands don't have the same otherwordly psychedelic Afro-funk sound that was born on Fear of Music, when Eno and Byrne fully joined artistic forces and solidified a legacy for the band. The one before it is still my favorite, and the one after it remains in the brightest light, but Fear of Music may indeed be the one that defines the band in the future.

[BradH]

The author could have made a better case for influence by naming some other bands who this album supposedly influenced, and not just one record by Paul Simon.

They could've made a better case by picking Remain In Light which hit like a bombshell, artistically speaking, and was far more influential.

[3-LockBox]

Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Dismemberment Plan, Arcade Fire, Rae's pick, Enon, and on and on.

I don't know that any of these bands follow in Talking Heads footsteps as far as performance art is concerned, but the band that popped in my head was Mosest Mouse. And your right, I can't think of too many bands since who used world beat to the effect that the Talking Heads did. Acts like The Police were already flirting with that sound concurrently, and Paul Simon was experiementing with alternate beat patterns and international rythms way before The Talking Heads, and would have made Graceland with or without the any Head release.