Crosseyed and Painless – Talking Heads

Beef up your 'mixtapes' with this growing collection of overlooked songs, old and new. One track, three times a week. Don’t forget to join in the conversation, too.

‘Facts are simple and facts are straight/Facts are lazy and facts are late/Facts all come with points of view/Facts don't do what I want them to.’

Once in a lifetime, a young David Byrne explored the music and literature of a distant planet (Africa) with producer Brian Eno aboard. The result was the 1980 album Remain in Light, as dazzling as any music produced in that decade, and a prerequisite for taking on the mind-bending Eno-Byrne album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts that followed a year later. Inspired by the Afrobeat of Nigeria’s Fela Kuti, Talking Heads embraced funk and polyrhythms, and the song Crosseyed and Painless is one of the high points.

The song’s lyrics, complete with Byrne’s dissertation on “facts”, could have been written about Donald T. Rump and the pandemic. “Facts are useless in emergencies.”