Maps of Music

More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978)

Where the lyrics of More Songs About Buildings and Food take you, and where it was really made.

The front cover is a mosaic of 529 Polaroid close-ups, and the photos were taken on the roof of a loft building where two of the band members lived.

Key places

Recorded at Compass Point Studios, Nassau (1978)

Recording site Compass Point Studios — The album was recorded and mixed at Compass Point Studios in Nassau, The Bahamas, in March and April 1978. Brian Eno produced the album, the first of three he made with the band in a row. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Rooftop shoot for the front cover (1978)

Album cover Long Island City loft building roof — Byrne and Weymouth took the Polaroid photographs for the front cover on the roof of a loft building in Long Island City, where Frantz and Weymouth lived. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• Second album by the American rock band Talking Heads
• Released 14 July 1978 by Sire Records
• A new wave album
• First of three consecutive albums produced by Brian Eno
• Sound moves toward a more danceable style
• Singer David Byrne's unusual delivery crosses with a new emphasis on the rhythm section
• Bassist Tina Weymouth and drummer Chris Frantz take a bigger role
• Peaks at No. 29 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart and No. 21 on the UK Albums Chart

Background

• The album gives Talking Heads their first top 30 single, a cover of Al Green's 1974 song Take Me to the River
• That single reached No. 26 on the pop singles chart in 1979 and pushed the album to gold status

Recording

• Recorded and mixed in March and April 1978 at Compass Point Studio, New Providence, The Bahamas
• Rhett Davies is credited as engineer, and Benji Armbrister as assistant engineer
• Joe Gastwirt handled mastering
• Found a Job was mixed by Ed Stasium at Mediasound
• Tina and the Typing Pool, women who worked in the studio offices, sing backing vocals on The Good Thing

Cover

• Byrne conceived the front cover, and artist Jimmy De Sana executed it
• The front cover is a photographic mosaic of the band made from 529 close-up Polaroid photographs
• The rear cover shows Portrait U.S.A., a satellite color photomosaic of the United States
• Portrait U.S.A. was created by NASA and General Electric for National Geographic and published in July 1976
• Warner Music Group reissued and remastered the album in 2005 in DualDisc format, with four bonus tracks
• A 3CD deluxe edition was released on 25 July 2025

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · pt.wikipedia.org · www.discogs.com

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

Formation

• Talking Heads were an American rock band formed in New York City in 1975.
• Byrne, Frantz, and Weymouth met at the Rhode Island School of Design, where they formed the Artistics in 1973.
• After moving to New York, they took the name Talking Heads, joined the New York punk scene, and recruited Jerry Harrison in January 1977.
• They signed to Sire Records in November 1976 and released their debut album Talking Heads: 77 in 1977.

Members

• David Byrne: lead vocals, guitar, keyboards, percussion (1975–1991, 2002).
• Chris Frantz: drums, percussion, backing vocals (1975–1991, 2002).
• Tina Weymouth: bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (1975–1991, 2002).
• Jerry Harrison: keyboards, guitar, backing vocals (1977–1991, 2002).
• Additional musicians including Adrian Belew, Bernie Worrell, and Nona Hendryx joined the band's shows and sessions in the 1980s.

Career

• The band collaborated with producer Brian Eno on More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978), Fear of Music (1979), and Remain in Light (1980).
• Their cover of Al Green's "Take Me to the River" was their first Billboard Top 30 hit.
• Speaking in Tongues (1983) brought mainstream commercial success, including the Top 10 hit "Burning Down the House".
• Stop Making Sense (1984), directed by Jonathan Demme, is often regarded as the greatest concert film of all time.
• Little Creatures (1985) was their best-selling studio album.
• Byrne left in 1991 and the band disbanded; they reunited briefly in 2002 for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.
• Four Talking Heads albums appeared on Rolling Stone's 2003 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• The Washington Post's Harry Sumrall praised Talking Heads as the new voice of the New Wave and credited this record with fulfilling that promise
• Brian Eno's production gave punk's rawness and energy a sophisticated artistic form, according to the same review
• Steve Simels of Stereo Review called it a punk album with an eccentric mixture of Sixties funk and SoHo minimalism
• Ken Emerson of Rolling Stone called it a reconciliation of art and punk rock, with witty distillations of disco and reggae rhythms

Reappraisal

• Robert Christgau wrote in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981) that the band became a quintet in an ideal producer-artist collaboration
• Christgau found that every one of the eleven songs was a positive pleasure, with the tension between Byrne's compulsive flights and the rock bottom of the music as the focus
• The Brooklyn Rail added the album to its list of avant-pop albums
• Ian Gittins called it a post-punk album, and Simon Reynolds described it as psychedelic funk
• Pitchfork ranked it 45th among the best albums of the 1970s in 2006
• Pitchfork's Nick Sylvester wrote that the album transformed the Talking Heads from a quirky CBGB spectacle into a band nearly unanimously regarded as 'it'

Records

• Peaked at No. 29 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart
• Reached No. 21 on the UK Albums Chart
• The single Take Me to the River reached No. 26 on the pop singles chart in 1979
• The album reached gold status after the single's success
• NME ranked it fourth among the top Albums of the Year for 1978
• Take Me to the River ranked 16th among the year's top tracks in the same NME list
• Rolling Stone ranked it 382nd on its 500 greatest albums list in 2003, 383rd in 2012, and 364th in 2020
• Rolling Stone ranked it 57th on its list of the greatest albums of 1967 to 1987

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · pt.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• Weymouth told Creem in a 1979 interview that the title came from an earlier joke about titles for the band's last album
• XTC's Andy Partridge later claimed that he had given the title to Byrne
• Frantz's 2020 memoir says Byrne and Weymouth took the front cover Polaroids on the roof of a Long Island City loft building
• Frantz later wrote that the cover art was heavily influenced by the photomosaic works of Byrne's former girlfriend Andrea Kovacs, and that the band should have credited her
• The rear cover photomosaic Portrait U.S.A. was made from satellite images, and the album's rear cover credits it as a NASA and General Electric work
• Found a Job was mixed at Media Sound rather than at the Bahamas studio

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · pt.wikipedia.org · www.discogs.com

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