Trivia / Naked

• Cut Song: Three outtakes from the Naked sessions would surface on other releases over the years.
  • "Sax and Violins" would be included on the soundtrack to the 1991 Wim Wenders film Until the End of the World. The song would also be released as a single that same year, serving as the final product released by Talking Heads before the official announcement of their dissolution; "Sax and Violins" is also included as a bonus track on the 2005 remastered release of Naked.
  • "Lifetime Piling Up" was completed for the 1992 retrospective compilation Popular Favorites: Sand in the Vaseline and its international-exclusive Greatest Hits Album counterpart, Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads; the song was also released as a CD single to promote both compilations.
  • "In Asking Land" was reworked into the song "Carnival Eyes" on Byrne's 1989 solo album Rei Momo; the song in its original form wouldn't be released until 2003, when it was included exclusively on the Once in a Lifetime Boxed Set.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Of a sort. Promo CD copies of Naked were among the first Warner Music Group releases on the format to feature CD+G encoding, an extension of the Redbook standard that allowed low-resolution graphics to be displayed on a TV monitor in tandem with the music should the CD be played in compatible hardware (CD+G discs in general though had been commercially available since 1985). Like most of the few CD+G releases out there, Naked featured song lyrics displayed in real time, within a stylized layout; in this particular album's case, the graphics were designed after the cover art. The CD+G release also included a list of instruments per song (with markers to denote which ones were currently active) and which guitar chords were being played at the moment.
• Refitted for Sequel: "In Asking Land", an outtake from the Naked sessions, would be re-recorded with a mostly new set of lyrics on David Byrne's 1989 solo album Rei Momo under the title "Carnival Eyes".
• Throw It In!: According to the liner notes, during the sessions in Paris, the band had invited a lot of guest musicians to work with them. One day, they were expecting a particular guitarist that they hadn't previously met— nor did they know what he looked like, for that matter (as this was the pre-internet era, one couldn't just Google a picture of him; all they had to go off of was a name). A guy showed up in the studio and picked up a guitar, and the band, assuming that he was their special guest, recorded him on a few tracks. After laying down a few tracks, the guy left. Some time later, the actual guitarist, veteran Cameroonian musician Yves N'Djock, showed up and introduced himself, and the band realised that the guy they thought had been him had been a complete stranger. At least some of the stranger's guitar parts were deemed to be good enough to keep, so his contribution is still on the album.
• What Could Have Been: Level 42 collaborator Wally Badarou was the band's first choice for producer before settling on Steve Lillywhite. Badarous would ultimately play keyboard parts on "Blind" and "The Facts of Life", also helping seek out other guest musicians.
• Working Title: According to Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth originally wanted to call the album The Higher the Monkey Climb, the More He Expose, after a Jamaican idiom.
• Writing by the Seat of Your Pants: As with Remain in Light and Speaking in Tongues, the album's songs were worked up from jams in the studio.

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