Paramore – Burning Down the House Review

Fun times are ahead for the bands who are given the chance to cover Talking Heads classics. Whether Paramore is a strong choice or not for Burning Down the House is neither here nor there. They are. But if not, so what? Covers of this variety give artists a chance to pay their dues to the bands who brought them the mettle to make something exciting of their own. As Hayley Williams sports a cover of the David Byrne-led classic, it is clear to hear just how much of an impact the Speaking in Tongues record and Stop Making Sense – the classy live performance show from Talking Heads – made on Paramore. Not every development must be heard but this tribute piece has all the right energy, charm and power behind it.  

Those instrumental sections are essentially identical to the work Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison and Tina Weymouth put in – you cannot meddle with perfection. Paramore believes you can, though. Williams’ harsher style, the slight traces of venom leftover from This is Why, provide themselves on this cover which both captures the energetic fury of the Byrne original but also a new, broader light of pure, unrefined joy. It is all to play for when you lose yourself to the beat of a song whose lyrics bash together and bring about a desire to dance around. Burning Down the House affects Williams, whose delivery of “fighting fire with fire” is one of a few spots within that push Paramore ahead of Talking Heads on this cover.  

Little flickers of change come through toward the end of these instrumentals – though it makes sense to not make too much of an effort to sound different. At the end of it all, Paramore has a cover task on their hands, and manipulating the song too far out of place would be a tricky challenge, leaving them out of favour with those who still want the fundamentals of a song they can listen to in its original form, elsewhere. Wet Leg has something similar with their Psycho Killer cover, unrelated to Stop Making Sense but out there for those who wish to hear it. Paying tribute to the greats comes at a weighty cost. Those already established fans are out for blood and the cover of good fun and bowing down to the legacy of inspiration is no longer enough. Paramore jumps all the hurdles and navigates the often-lethal arena of covers, bringing a massively well-rounded cover of Burning Down the House.  

Thoroughly listenable, though much of this comes from how similar in tone the track is to its original. Williams charts enough of a vocal change to the original to warrant the single, and even if she did not, there would be plenty of Paramore fans lapping it up. Burning Down the House does not have its message or meaning changed but the harsher intonation, the charms of a unique voice and the impact of the song itself on Paramore may be lost to the pairing of the two monumental bands. Dig deeper than “Paramore has covered Talking Heads,” and deep within is a crystal-clear understanding of the intonation, tempo and style of one of art rock’s finest songs, which no doubt inspired one of the most popular alternative acts out there. A meeting of the minds, this A24-related piece is.