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T LKING HE DS
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REM IN IN LIGHT by Lola Nedic, Editor-in-Chief
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hen I was in high school, I had a devastating crush on a boy, as many people do. One day, he sent me the song “Born Under Punches,” which he described as “weird but good” and told me I should listen. I listened intently, and admittedly did not like the song much at first. It did however, intrigue me in a way that the boy never could. I took it upon myself to listen to the rest of the album and one-up him, and ended up wholeheartedly adoring it. It wasn’t like anything I’d really listened to before, and it certainly wasn’t an album I understood. I couldn’t decide if it was disco, or punk, or some fantastical Frankensteining of a hundred other genres. Whatever the album was, I loved it.
In the years I’ve spent listening to this album and practicing my Tina Weymouth impression in my bedroom, the thing that had mystified me so much became what I loved most about this record: its utter disregard for tradition. The Talking Heads refused to confine their masterpiece to the arbitrary and often restrictive grasp of genre. Instead, they created a completely nonsensical style of music that was all their own and unable to be replicated by even the most apt successors. Even the lyrics of the album, so entrancingly sung by lead vocalist David Byrne, are hardly coherent. But perhaps that is for the better - Remain in Light does not exist for its lyrics to be shoved through an English major and interpreted into oblivion. The album was made to be loved, danced to, absorbed entirely.
