It was 45 years ago this week that Talking Heads that released their fourth album Remain In Light, and you could say the world hasn’t been quite the same since. A shape-shifting record built on grooves inside grooves inside grooves, melding Afrobeat rhythms with tightly-wound funk, choppy guitars and David Byrne’s expressionist melodicism, Remain In Light must have sounded like it was from another planet when it arrived in 1980. Mainly because it still sounds like it’s from another planet now, in 2025.
Over the years, it has become more than just a landmark record for the art-rock trailblazers from New York, one of those rare albums that has seeped down through the generations, its influence springing up in random places. Remain In Light has sleeper cells right across the musical spectrum: you’ll find famous fans who swear by its brilliance plying their wares in genres as varied as mainstream pop, leftfield indie, electro, industrial and hard-rock. Of course, all of those things pale in comparison to the fact that it also had one of its songs covered by Kermit The Frog, the ultimate seal of approval:
