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Talking Heads: The Name of This Band is Talking Heads

Alfred Soto, Stylus, 27 August 2004

THE NAME OF ITS LEADER is David Byrne. Until 1987, when U2 and R.E.M.'s declamatory arena moves flexed the populist muscle Byrne could never manage, his band Talking Heads was the biggest alternative band in the world — back when "alternative" signified a hell of a lot more beyond gormless marketing. Two double platinum albums, not a single year in which the band didn't place an album in year-end polls and a Time magazine cover story — all for a band whose evolution from buttoned-up preppies to gonna-see-you-sweat synthesists of Afrobeat rhythms and art-school detachment should have confounded any commercial aspirations.

Total word count of piece: 680

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