David Byrne Dominik Bindl/GA/The Hollywood Reporter/Getty Images Share on Facebook Share on X Share to Flipboard Send an Email Show additional share options Share on LinkedIn Share on Pinterest Share on Reddit Share on Tumblr Share on Whats App Print the Article Post a Comment Yesterday, David Byrne revealed on Instagram Stories that he will marry his fiancee Mala Gaonkor in a matter of days. (In true eccentric Byrne style, the announcement appeared beneath a photo of lettuce.) The nuptials arrive on the same week that he drops his new album, Who Is the Sky?. With its kaleidoscopic cover and irresistible tunes, the latest release from the king of avant-garde pop keeps the party going. Fans will be able to feel the buzz in person when Byrne's highly anticipated new tour kicks off at the Dolby Theatre in November. For Byrne, an apostle of euphoria, all this giddiness seems fitting. Back in his Talking Head-fronting days, the euphoria was the jittery kind. In 2018's American Utopia tour, which later found lasting success on Broadway, it grew warmer and more communal. It's not blind bliss that he's selling, but, as he explains to The Hollywood Reporter, a celebration of the oddness of life. Says Byrne of the new record, "I think of it as a love song to humanity." Related Stories Music NFL Chief Roger Goodell on Speculation Taylor Swift Could Be This Year's Super Bowl Halftime Performer: "She Would Be Welcome at Any Time" Music Lady Gaga Drops New Song, Tim Burton-Directed "The Dead Dance" Video for 'Wednesday' Season 2 Hi, David. I may have seen you riding by on a bicycle in Manhattan once or twice, which you're known to do. I was on my bike yesterday, and I'll be on one later today. It's kind of how I get around. And yesterday was the Gay Pride parade. If I didn't have a bike, I would have been really stuck. Congratulations on an incredible run for you over the last five or so years. It was a delight to see you light up Broadway with American Utopia. And now you have this new album and a supporting tour. Can you tell me a bit about the inspiration for this new work? I was doing American Utopia on Broadway, which was interrupted by COVID. I didn't write anything during COVID. I did a lot of drawings, but I didn't write anything. As we started coming out of that I started writing stuff, a lot of songs. It was mainly the words, though, and a lot of them came out as little stories. I'd start with a title or the first couple of lines. My fiancée often reminds me to moisturize, and one evening I started to imagine: "What if it really, really works? What if I woke up looking a lot younger? What would that be like?" So I invented a whole scenario and that became the song "Moisturizer Thing." I did that with a few different songs where I'd start with a premise and just see where it went. Often it turned into a little parable, where there was actually something serious to say at the end. But you might have to get through some pretty silly or fantastic stuff to get there. You had some new collaborators on this album. Who are they? As these songs were coming into being, I would just do really simple demos for myself. I heard a record by this group called The Ghost Train Orchestra. It's a small orchestra, like 15 people, based here in New York. And I liked the sound of it. It was a mixture of a guitar, bass, drums, that kind of stuff and basic orchestral instruments, some winds, brass and string players. And I thought, "That's a nice sound. That's a nice combination. What if these songs that I'm doing kind of sounded like that?" So I surreptitiously managed to meet them by offering to sing the Rufus Wainwright parts at a concert they were doing in Brooklyn. I was still thinking about how the record might sound, and I had some records, vinyl and streaming that had been produced by a guy named Kid Harpoon. I was introduced to him at a birthday party in Santa Monica. He seemed very nice. So I sent him all my demos and said, "These are the kind of songs I write. They are what they are. I would love to work with you." That's how the elements came together. How exciting for Ghost Train to get a call from David Byrne. I'm reminded of David Bowie finding a jazz quartet for Blackstar at a little New York City jazz club. It has to be such an amazing moment for them. Well, we'll see. Yes, I hope they get some recognition and their attention. They're really inventive with their arrangements as players, so I hope that happens. Let's talk about the catchy first single "Everybody Laughs" and its ingenious music video. Gabriel Barcia-Colombo did the video. I'd seen kind of an art piece that he'd done in Times Square. He did this wonderful video installation piece that featured people "looking" out at the pedestrians in Times Square. And I loved that idea. We couldn't do it in Times Square. That is some expensive real estate there. You were talking about writing little allegories. It's a light song, but with some heavy implications. That's