August 26, 2008

David Byrne



While we're on the subject, I would call David Byrne a serious practitioner of mockitecture. He straddled the line between serious and silly, meaning and non-meaning, familiar and exotic. The first example of this is in his musical stylings. they incorporated many many different kinds of music from all over the world, exotic blends of rock, country, afro-pop and latin. but in the end, a beautiful, identifiable end product was produced. It reached across age and cultural boundaries. His lyrics did the same, but they took on the opposite philosophy. The lyrics usually were superficially silly, and seemingly had no meaning. They usually were about completely ordinary things. Lamps, post offices, dry ice factories. This is the harmonious dichotomy of Byrne's music. A touching Love Song sung to a lamp. Seriously Goofy.

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