(Credits: Far Out / A24)
Tue 23 September 2025 23:00, UK
Try as people might to top it, there probably won’t ever be a better concert film than Talking Heads’ Stop Making Sense.
While so many films of this nature attempt to capture a band at their creative peak, the New York band’s creation crams in so many additional minute details that elevate it one step further than most concert films. Shot over the course of four consecutive nights at the Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, director Jonathan Demme wished to not just distil a moment in time where the band were making their best music and performing at their highest capacity, but to capture a true celebration of everything they had become and stood for.
It all starts out quite subdued, with only frontman David Byrne on stage with an acoustic guitar, and a cassette playing the backing track, and as more members begin to come out song by song, they fill out the sound, bringing what can only be described as a truly vibrant atmosphere. The core foursome are joined by five additional members, providing backing vocals, percussion, synths and additional guitars in a way that layers their music, and considering their studio efforts at the time had begun to branch out and incorporate influences from African music, this complex and rhythmically challenging machine that they created didn’t just perform the songs, they animated them and gave them all character.
Stop Making Sense takes you, the viewer, on a journey, but at the same time, it was always designed to take the band themselves on a journey, specifically David Byrne. Growing from an awkward and lonesome individual singing by himself into something that’s brimming with confidence, perhaps on the verge of being greater than it can handle, Byrne in particular goes through a significant evolution over the course of the record, and it’s thanks to the input of the additional band members that this becomes possible.
In a 2023 interview with NPR Music, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the concert film being shot, Byrne admitted that it not only tells a story across the film, but reveals some truths about who he has become as an individual in the years since.
“You see this person in the beginning who’s kind of angsty, stumbling around and singing about ‘Psycho Killer’,” he said, reflecting on the image he creates for himself in the film; oversized suit, stumbling about the stage and frustrated by his own awkwardness. However, this progressively changes over the course of the film, and eventually, once the entire band is assembled for ‘Burning Down the House’, the event has turned into a celebratory jamboree.
“By the end, he’s surrendered to the music and is fairly joyful,” Byrne continued, “as much as he could be at that point. And he’s found a kind of community.”
Byrne evolves rapidly throughout the course of Stop Making Sense, and the same can be said of his own artistic endeavours. The songs heard on Talking Heads: 77 are brimming with excitement and novel ideas, but there’s a certain assuredness that’s absent from the record. By the time we reach their third album, Fear of Music, we begin to see this fading away, and it’s all but vanished by the time Speaking in Tongues, the most recent album at the time of Stop Making Sense’s release, comes out. You can see it as a concert film if you want, but if the truth be told, it’s far more than just that.
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