Song and Circumstance: The Work of David Byrne from Talking Heads to the Present

David Byrne's work functions almost completely through the mass media in popular music, experimental theatre, film, television, fine art and writing. The underlying connection is a conceptual approach to both high and popular art. Byrne has always accompanied his work with a stream of conceptual reflections, by developing a loose theoretical patchwork of ideas on music, ritual, culture and myth, reading widely in anthropology, socio-biology, neurology, ethnomusicology, art theory, media theory, comparative mythology and so on.

Based on the fame he gained with his band Talking Heads (1977-circa 1989), Byrne is able to enter into collaborations with many artists, some of popular fame Brian Eno, Jonathan Demme - many known best in more specialized artistic circles Joseph Kosuth (conceptual artist), Caetano Veloso (Brazilian singer/songwriter of Tropicalismo fame). The map of collaborations, including the casual and incidental ones, reveals an ongoing effort to combine avant-gardism with popular appeal.

While Byrne developed his career in a pragmatic way, grasping opportunities for collaboration when they presented themselves, this theoretical patchwork is a constant factor. The account of Byrne's career, while told in roughly chronological order, is ordered by choosing a specific abstract approach, or a combination of two approaches, for each chapter, discussing the parallels and contradictions between such approaches to benefit the interpretation of Byrne's art. As a result, the fertile conceptual brew that characterizes Byrne's way of making art is present from the beginning, while each chapter adds to a thorough insight. This is the first book to offer a full account of Byrne's sprawling artistic portfolio.