Dance Yrself Clean
On David Byrne's "American Utopia," 1984's "Stop Making Sense," and subtext
I recently saw David Byrne’s musical/concert/performance American Utopia with a friend on Broadway. Afterward, I re-watched Stop Making Sense the 1984 concert film from which the 2022 production takes at least its color scheme, if not its intellectual cues. In both, Byrne is dressed in a gray suit and dances in a way that is both simple and engaging. The rest of The Talking Heads are absent from the Broadway performance, but a diverse cast of musicians fill in ably.
In the show, Byrne runs through Talking Heads songs and a few solo tracks before finishing with a cover of a Janelle Monáe song called “Hell You Talmbout,” which can be found on a bonus Target-exclusive track of her album The Electric Lady. This song has a call and response where Byrne began to chant names of black people killed by police officers. Between songs, he monologues on the importance of voting, how kid are “fucked” due to climate change and how he couldn’t do the show without immigrants (presumably the band and himself as Byrne is naturalized from Scotland. He doesn’t mention any other laborers behind the scenes making the show run). I looked up Byrne’s net worth during one of these monologues and showed my friend so we could laugh. It’s about $40 million. Buddy, WE are not fucked.
My friend noted how much of his monologuing sounded out of time, perhaps from the Trump Era, which proved correct as the performance was from 2019, and turned into a film distributed by HBO and produced by Spike Lee in 2020. All of the monologues were infuriating for their banality, and certainly detracted from the performance, yet, in an effort to be intellectually honest and rigorous with myself, I wanted to try to understand why I felt that way.
My immediate answer was that in 2022, as the Biden administration proves itself to be an abject failure in domestic policy, and the exact liberal sin-eater required for the beginning of American Imperial collapse, a preening, clean liberalism that Byrne delivered to his presumably liberal New York City audience felt like the false profundity of a freshman philosophy class. It is the simple anti-intellectualism of our moment. Byrne’s monologues represent a refusal to interrogate liberal assumptions about voting, race, class, or climate change because these opinions form not just an ideology, but an aesthetic presentation of Byrne’s virtue despite his net worth1.
While sufficient enough of an answer for me, I wanted to dig deeper as to why those things felt so annoying. What about the performance made the monologues feel so disjointed from the music? Why did the ostensibly unobjectionable politics of Byrne, even if they’re milquetoast, bother me so much?
I considered the effect the performance had on me. Byrne’s voice was never stellar but distinctive, known for its moan rather than its range. At nearly seventy years old, his power to modulate his voice has faded. Thus, what was once attractive feels lost.
Then there is the dancing. Famously, Byrne is not a “good” dancer. I’d argue that he’s not intending to be good, but democratic. His ability to choreograph things that are simple with sharp lines and direct movements reveals the façade of choreography as a means of performance. When someone sees Dua Lipa complete various dance moves to perfection seemingly without breaking a sweat, one must be in awe at her sheer ability. Yet, when one watches Byrne shrug his shoulders in an oversized grey suit, the response is “I could do that!” And there is the point. Byrne’s ability isn’t a deficiency in performance, but a claim to universality—yes you, even you could be a performer.
So, in American Utopia, as Byrne and his band move without fluidity, the façade of David Byrne-performer collapses. Surely then the simplicity reveals the directness in his artistic communication—a line is a line, a guitar is a guitar, a song is a song. During “Burning Down the House,” the only flourish was the stage turned red, like fire. In the opening song, “Here,” Byrne carries around a model of a brain as he sings about what parts of it do, then points to those sections. There is not a “rock star” on the stage, but some guy named David shooting the shit, doing karaoke, we are all equals. The performance then is sui generis in the literal Latin sense “of its own kind.” Rather, it’s not unique as the phrase is usually understood, but literally a performance for performance. He exists within a discursive space that is dissecting the differences between audience and performer and history. The argument goes that when Jimi Hendrix destroys his guitar at Woodstock, he is not overwhelmed by the muses and Dionysus, he is acting on a stage as a performer doing something interesting meant to entertain. The disjointed nature of the Talking Heads and David Byrne in general comes from their desire to perform in a way that lacks performance, but is ultimately one.
And thus, coupling the directness of his artistic arguments with the straight and narrow liberal monologues about voting, one reveals their hollowness on Byrne’s lips. Just as the performance reveals itself in simplicity so do the politics. Voting matters for itself. End of sentence. There is nothing strategic or ideological to be said with your vote. A vote is a vote. Saying the names of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor over and over again, as he does during “Hell You Talmbout,” is as direct and radical an act someone on Byrne’s stage can do given the linear restrictions placed upon his art. Here is where my friction in the performance began to reveal itself: everything was so explicit.
When I came home, I re-watched the 1984 film to see if it held the same power on me I remember. The straight forward answer is yes it does. I think this is because although I’ve seen and heard the tracks dozens of times, the audience within the concert are hearing things for the first time. They are excited like things are new! It’s like watching children open their first gifts on Christmas Day—how could you not believe in Santa after that? When Byrne begins to run in place with his backup singers, it’s energizing because he is alive and the audience can see how his quirky performance exists relative to the other rock bands of the time. It’s new! There it is! The new!
What I also noticed is that the people of color on stage lacked labels as they did in the live show. The politics, the world Byrne and the other Talking Heads wished to see existed as artistic subtext, not one meant to be uncovered or ferreted out, but one present, alive and casual. The politics didn’t come in monologues, but lived on the stage, which in 2022 seems more radical than reminding the audience they’re there.
It is not because saying Black Lives Matter is “cringe,” or even chanting the names of those killed by police officers is, but instead, because these things are symbols for a struggle (a contested concept of struggle mind you), but one that is active and occurring in the present. Byrne terribly dilutes this struggle by bringing it to the level of his straight-forward performance. He brings it down to a shoulder shrug, not in intention but in effect. His intention belongs somewhere along the axis of “the left” in America but this is not enough to make what is a disjointed and enervating performance finally enjoyable after the Broadway haze faded. All I could think was “just play the hits grandpa! No one wants to hear what you learned about race this year.”
Byrne’s invocation of pallid liberalism withdraws the power from his intention and turns the performance into an event where the audience wants him to hit the correct musical and political beats. When he began the dance for “This Must Be the Place,” people cheered because they expected it to be this way. When he said “immigrants, we couldn’t do this show without them,” people cheered. By bringing art down to the level of politics and sloganeering, Byrne does a disservice to former.
"By bringing art down to the level of politics and sloganeering, Byrne does a disservice to the former." Solid <3 Thank you.