YMMV / David Byrne

• Archive Panic: Byrne's studio album catalog might not be too extensive, at seven solo albums and three collaborative albums (plus the eight albums he did with Talking Heads), but factor in the much greater wealth of soundtrack releases, one-off collaborations, and compilation spots and suddenly that archive goes from manageable to overwhelmingly large and scattered.
• Crazy Is Cool: Byrne's output as a musician is generally considered to be this trope, combining his eccentricity with innovative composition techniques and compelling subject matter (even when it's something as mundane as breathing).
• Critical Dissonance: From Uh-Oh to Look Into the Eyeball, Byrne's albums tended not to be the biggest critical darlings (in part due to the skyscrapingly-high bar set by Talking Heads' first five albums), often being considered run-of-the-mill at best. Fans however enjoy these works a great deal more; it helps that Uh-Oh built off of the sound Talking Heads ended off on and that an MP3 of "Like Humans Do" from Look Into the Eyeball was bundled with Windows XP.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The performances for the American Utopia seem to be this among fans of both Byrne and Talking Heads, thanks to its combination of Byrne's past and present music with performance artistry techniques; many have described it as an arguable rival to Stop Making Sense, with the 2020 Spike Lee Concert Film only solidifying this opinion.
• Fair for Its Day: "Now I'm Your Mom" was radically progressive in its positive portrayal of transgender identities in 1992, among other things comparing transitioning to a caterpillar metamorphosing into a butterfly and describing the trans community as "pioneers." Decades later, it comes off as considerably behind the times with how some of its lines imply that being trans is a choice and that gender is tethered to biological sex (not to mention the fact that cisgender individuals portraying transgender characters is much more scorned nowadays than in the 1990s). Also not helping its case is Byrne's contemporary description of it as "a sensitive ditty about a man's decision to cut his dick off," which while standard for 1992 would be considered transphobic today. It's perhaps because of Byrne's awareness of this that the song is never featured in live performances.
• Friendly Fandoms: A noticeable overlap exists between Byrne fans and fans of Peter Gabriel, largely owing to Gabriel being a fan of Byrne and Talking Heads (with Byrne reciprocating the admiration) and due to Gabriel & Byrne being considered kindred spirits in their affinity for eclectic art pop with heavy worldbeat elements, surreal music videos, and appealingly odd live shows.
• Genius Bonus: "The Call of the Wild" features the line "Johnny Mathis sings Cole Porter." The juxtaposition of the two makes extra sense when accounting for the fact that both musicians are gay men — Mathis was outed in 1982, while Porter was notorious for his lavish parties full of "gay and bisexual activity."
• Growing the Beard: 2004's Grown Backwards is typically seen as the point where Byrne fully came into his own as a solo musician after Talking Heads' 1991 breakup. Though his whole solo discography is well-regarded among fans, Grown Backwards was his first solo album since 1989's Rei Momo to receive high marks from critics and is generally agreed to have marked the solidification of his eclectic brand of art pop, proving that he could produce substantial work outside of and distinct from Talking Heads.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • A bit of an out-there example, but a noteworthy one nonetheless; the first 100,000 CD copies of Uh-Oh feature a translucent red tray for the jewel case, and the disc art on all CD copies uses a translucent gold background; red and gold just so happen to be colors supported by the autism rights movement (in direct opposition to the blue used by Autism Speaks, whose rhetoric is regarded by the autistic community as ableist and eugenicist), and Byrne would discover that he himself is autistic nearly two decades after the album's release. Heck, given that red alone is a color motif for the autism rights movement, Byrne's association with that color that goes all the way back to his career with Talking Heads may count.
  • On a related note, prior to forming Talking Heads with Tina Weymouth, Byrne and Chris Frantz were in a group that were alternatively called the Artistics and the Autistics, long before Byrne himself was aware of his own autism.
• Periphery Demographic: Byrne's discovery and revelation of his autism attracted a good deal of new fans from the neurodivergent community, one that Byrne never really had in mind for most of his career (largely owing to the long amount of time it took for him to discover that he is autistic).
• Signature Song:
  • "Like Humans Do", thanks to being bundled as a demonstration for Windows Media Player circa-Windows XP.
  • Talking Heads fans may also consider "What a Day That Was" as this, given how it was the sole track from The Catherine Wheel to be included in Stop Making Sense^note a performance of "Big Business" that immediately segued into "I Zimbra" was also filmed, but was removed from the final cut; it's still viewable on home media releases.
• Nightmare Fuel: "Horses", a nightMAREish (get it) track written for an interpretive dance. The song is most famous for being the subject of an urban legend, out of all things, claiming the "ghost song" was written by an unknown composer who was Driven to Suicide after it was completed (given that Byrne's both fairly well-known and, as of this writing, still alive, that legend is obviously false). An otherwise disturbing song.
• Tough Act to Follow: While the success he achieved with Talking Heads gave him an unspoken Auteur License to do whatever the fuck he wants with his music, his solo work has perpetually existed within the shadow of his old band, to the point where many have listened to or at least heard of Talking Heads, but are completely unaware of Byrne's solo career. Byrne could put out an album that cures cancer in everyone who hears it, and people will still bug him about reuniting Talking Heads.
• Values Dissonance:
  • During one portion of the "self-interview" he did to promote Stop Making Sense, Byrne dons blackface for one of the interviewer characters. It's plainly obvious that there wasn't any racist intent behind it (given the character being portrayed identically to everyone else and Byrne's own social consciousness about black issues), but Byrne would still eventually apologize for the bit both on Twitter and a blog post in 2020.
  • "Now I'm Your Mom" features a line positively comparing the trans community to Christopher Columbus, in the sense that both parties are "pioneers." Over 20 years later, increased awareness of Columbus' role in the Taíno genocide would make such a comparison more insulting than congratulatory.
• Win Back the Crowd: While Byrne's output is consistently well-regarded among fans, critics were apprehensive towards his post-Talking Heads solo material for a while; Grown Backwards changed that for the better, receiving positive reviews from critics and being regarded by the music press as a huge Growing the Beard moment for Byrne, demonstrating to them that he could still pen unique and engaging music without his former bandmates.

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