David Byrne – Everybody Laughs Review

A glimpse into the human condition is what David Byrne offers on his new single, Everybody Laughs. That they do, former Talking Heads frontman. Cry, die, get high, all the simple, catchy rhymes which you would expect from a frontman whose post-group work was obsessed with the medium of dance and salsa. It works well, and it fits the aesthetic Byrne has carved out for himself recently as an explorer of what makes people smile and frown. Who is the Sky?, an album to follow on from the roaring success of American Utopia, strips back the appeal of Byrne as a lyricist and instead finds him suffer the same trouble as Inhaler did when working with Kid Harpoon. Byrne lashes out at those stuck on their mobile devices, and yet offers no reason for his upset, much like those at gigs do. Broad meaning may fail, but there are a few bolts of brilliance within.  

Wading through the rubbish of life and hoping for reinvention is, too, what Byrne offers here. We are going through the changes not out of an instinct but because those wretched electronics are telling us we need to. There is still a tremendous positivity to Byrne here, but he finds the time to note a downward spiral occurring in the world around us, a sense that life is leaving us behind as we find ourselves falling for clickbait and commentaries on how to live life, from the mouth of someone who knows nobody. Even with that spirited dissection of humanity and the soft introduction of those reasons to be cheerful Byrne had so frequently shared, Everybody Laughs feels a tad flat. It has more in common with Sesame Street and the generalised goodwill which is lacking in the real world than it does with one of the great writers of his heyday. He is far beyond that now, but there is still much to love about this new effort.  

To pull a conscious and truly believed view of the world from words so simple is a skill not utilised by most pop artists. At least Byrne is doing that with Everybody Laughs. Strings and slightly sticky-sounding instrumentals are thrown behind Byrne, who tries to weigh down a lighter-than-usual message. He is lost in the fog of the modern world, and without a smartphone to use as a torch, stumbles and falls into the potholes of current-day living. Life, death, and food. The many emotions of life. They have the late-stage charm Byrne offered on American Utopia, but without the deeper commentary, they lack the flow of a man truly tuned to the world around him. A fear of technology is absolute and necessary in the modern world, but mobile phones are not the villainous death-makers Byrne sounds off on with Everybody Laughs.  

Where Byrne had a stunning view of the world and found reasons to be cheerful on his previous album, the lead single of Who is the Sky? finds the Talking Heads frontman moaning about the ever-changing lands. Still charming and catchy, but there is a lack of heart to this one. Not because of what Byrne is criticising or why, but because it does not sound as though he truly believes it, either. It is not as though he will follow in the footsteps of Bob Dylan and bar the offending items from his shows. He once more explores the human spirit – but that is a hard task to follow through on when the world over, the soul of individuals, or the collective joy, has diminished rapidly. If Byrne hopes to rekindle the fires of life, he will have to work much harder than this.