Talking Heads

In a promotional video for Talking Heads’ 1984 live album Stop Making Sense, an interviewer who looks suspiciously like David Byrne as an elderly man asks David Byrne how he can be a singer when his voice is so bad.

Byrne, who is dressed in a giant suit, answers blankly: “The better the singer’s voice, the harder it is to believe what they’re saying.” When the band started out in mid-'70s New York after meeting at the Rhode Island School of Design (Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz, bassist Tina Weymouth, and, later, keyboardist Jerry Harrison), they seemed like the antithesis to the rebellion of punk: They were mild-mannered, neatly dressed, well-educated, and soft-spoken (“Psycho Killer,” “The Big Country”).

Weirdest of all, they made music you could dance to (“Found a Job”).