Unpopular opinion alert: Talking Heads are one of those bands that I’m supposed to like but just can’t. They’re universally revered by critics, and their music influenced most of my own favourite artists, but to me their songs feel repetitive and uninteresting, their instrumentation horribly dated, and the vocals straight up annoying.
And then, I heard this line from the crucial emotional climax of last week’s song: But I look at you as our second drinks arrive / The piano player’s playing “This Must Be the Place” / and it’s a miracle to be alive – and I immediately had to find out which song said pianist was playing.
Of course it was Talking Heads.
I was so disappointed. I wanted the song mentioned in a beautiful song to be beautiful as well. Why would Father John Misty reference a track by the same band that wrote one of my all-time most hated pieces of music? Hesitantly, I gave “This Must Be the Place” a listen.
It was…not good.
It sounded like a demo track from a Casio keyboard played on repeat while a half-drunk karaoke singer jumped in occasionally with some vocals. Five minutes, no melodic intrigue, and finished with a fade-out. Ugh.
Thankfully, Iron & Wine and Ben Bridwell found the beauty in this song and brought it out in a 2015 version from their all-covers album “Sing Into My Mouth” – which itself is a lyric from this song.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. Instead of opening the song with a minute of repetitive synth vamping, they give us 15 seconds of pretty guitar picking before getting to the lyrics.
2. Those lyrics are pretty good. They paint an elegant picture of an inelegant night out, filled with regret: I feel numb / Burn with a weak heart / I guess I must be having fun / the less we say about it the better.
3. The pedal steel guitar has the same type of sliding effect as the awful synthesizer in the original, but it’s much more down home and warm.
Recommended listening activity:
Having leftover pizza because – unpopular opinion alert – it tastes even better than the original.