Fridge Brilliance
- The slightly Captain Obvious nature of some of David Byrne's lyrics, especially the early ones, has often been pointed out: the way that they sometimes consist of apparently inconsequential or quirkily removed descriptions of everyday behaviour. For example, "Don't Worry About the Government" is from the point of view of a man who's telling himself about where he lives, what civil servants do, how important friends are, etc.; and "New Feeling" has the singer negotiate the stress of a new situation; "Pulled Up" is a person describing what it was like to have a friend that cheered them up; "The Girls Want To Be With The Girls" is the singer coming to understand the different ways that boys and girls behave; "I'm Not In Love" is a very precise description of how the singer doesn't want to behave towards a girl that he's not in love with, etc. (Byrne would eventually move away from this way of writing, but it's all over the band's first two albums.) This was originally thought of as David Byrne being randomly quirky, but after he was diagnosed as being on the autistic spectrum in later life, they now seem very much like songs written from the point of view of an autistic guy coming to understand the behaviour of neurotypical people. He still wrote the occasional song in this manner later in their career: "Creatures of Love", for example.
