(Credits: Far Out / Alamy / Michael Markos)
Fri 17 October 2025 3:30, UK
After Talking Heads wrapped up their Remain In Light tour in 1980, the tension between bandmates was on the rise. The group took a break, with frontman David Byrne pursuing a solo album, leaving founding members Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz to lead the Tom Tom Club, an American new wave collective.
In 1981, the husband and wife duo were invited to the Compass Point studios in Nassau by Island Records boss Chris Blackwell. After having worked with Talking Heads, he arranged the recording session for a single in the hope that it could turn into a whole album. ‘Wordy Rappinghood’ emerged and became one of the first rap songs released by a major label.
The song, mixing R&B, afrobeats, and rap, was released soon after Blondie’s ‘Rapture’, which was the first chart topper to feature a rap. Delivered by white female vocalist Debbie Harry, both Blondie’s and Tina Weymouth’s flow in ‘Wordy Rappinghood’ bears little resemblance to the rap culture suddenly emerging from New York City.
Weymouth and Frantz were fans of the booming hip-hop scene and created something that resembled the innovative rap framework. Contemporary rap was known for using samples of existing beats, but both ‘Rapture’ and ‘Wordy Rappinghood’ recorded original music.
The idea for the use of rap was mostly practical, since the band’s front-woman was not a trained vocalist. “I said, I’m not a singer, I have a lung condition I was born with,” she told Uncut. Her husband sported the idea of following the rap trend, and since hip-hop had been pointing the spotlight at beats above vocals, any deficiencies in Weymouth’s wordy onomatopoeias were overlooked.
There was some singing on the track, however, thanks to Weymouth’s sisters, Lany and Laura. They were flown in to assist the creative process, and eventually sang backup to bring some more melodic elements into the track. Their addition brought on the idea for the lines in French, born out of a childhood sojourn in France: “Mots pressés, mots sensés, mots qui disent la vérité”. This translates to “Rushed words, sensible words, words that tell the truth” – possibly some of the only non-gibberish in the song.
As for following in Blondie’s footsteps, neither act actually knew the other was working on a rap song – while Tom Tom Club was working in the Bahamas, Blondie was recording in New York. The dancehall in the Bahamas, where the band had their first rehearsal since their Talking Heads hiatus, gave the new band their name – the Tom Tom Club.
The band continued working until 2013, far outlasting Talking Heads. After consistently clashing with his bandmates, David Byrne left Talking Heads in what he deemed an “ugly” breakup in 1991. Byrne’s reaction to the Tom Tom Club’s success was reportedly negative, as ‘Wordy Rappinghood’ made it to the UK’s top ten and far outlasted his own solo endeavours. “I think it pissed him off,” Chris Frantz told Rolling Stone.
‘Wordy’ didn’t end up making it to the US as a single, but was released in Europe and Latin America, where it had considerable success. Blackwell loved it and commissioned the full album. Now a forgotten classic, the tune’s catchy layers of unmistakable gobbledygook were among the first to indulge its listeners in clearly audible words, as rap started to run its course into the mainstream.
Related Topics