David Byrne’s Everybody Laughs: A High Octane Track About the Human Condition

Think back to old solo David Byrne tracks…tracks like Girls on my Mind or my fav Dirty Old Town. You get this salsa and world beat that is percussion and brass heavy with Byrne’s thick and romantic vocal. It is a perfect marriage. He drifted away from this sound as he started working more and more with Brian Eno. Well, with his latest track Everybody Laughs with Ghost Train Orchestra he goes back to that high octane brass forward vibe. Let’s take a closer look at this track about the human condition. The good, the bad and the ugly.

The first real striking thing is the complex musical arrangement. There is a lot happening in this track. A count in, which I love a good count in. Stand up bass, acoustic guitar, chimes, strings, xylophone, drums, bongos, brass and probably four or five more instruments I missed. This is in stark contrast to his largely electronic sound with Brian Eno. This is purely organic with instruments that seem to jump in and fade out with lives of their own. You may think that having so much happening would be just a bunch of noise. Well, it is surprisingly tight. I think this is because Byrne largely lived in his high energy organic sound in his early solo career. Having 27 instruments on a track is not new to him. What works is that every sound in the track is all working towards high energy. There is a common goal that unifies the arrangement.

Lyrically, Byrne is talking about connection and what makes us human. As Byrne goes through is that this is both for the good and for the bad. In the modern world everyone is driven by greed, technology, believing everything they hear without critical thought and wanting what the other person has. Having said that, everyone laughs, everyone dances, everyone is looking for inspiration and ultimately everyone is connected. I take what Byrne is saying is that we need to work past the negative aspects of the human condition to get to what unifies us for the better. There seems to be a fight between the most basic aspects of humanity (death, life, living and dancing) and the modern parts of humanity that are dividing us (mobile phones, everyone knows what everybody does and everything being closer and true). I think it is this conflict between modern and essential that is interesting when unpacking this track.

We have not heard from Byrne in maybe 5 – 6 years. It seems that A24’s reissue of the Stop Making Sense movie has given him some inspiration. Thank God. This is an amazing track with a lot to say and harkens back to that high energy big suit wearing Byrne that I love. If you are a Byrne fan this is a must listen and I will see you on his accompanying tour.

Listen to Everybody Laughs