.
For the follow-up, he enlisted the New York ensemble Ghost Train Orchestra and British producer Kid Harpoon, who won a Grammy for his work on Harry Styles’ 2023 album Harry’s House.
Byrne was at first “a little bit surprised” about the idea of working with a successful pop music producer, but Harpoon came highly recommended, he says.
“I thought, wow, my stuff is a little bit on the fringe there, or a little bit more peculiar than some of the people he’s worked with in some ways, not to take anything away from their talent. But he liked it… he realised, oh, you know, this is David, and this is what he does.”
The cover of Who Is the Sky?
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David Byrne on his upcoming return to NZ Music 101
Byrne views the 12 songs on Who Is the Sky? as love songs – “not totally surprising”, he says, since he married American entrepreneur Mala Gaonkar just this September.
‘My love gave me a moisturising thing / Said hey David put this on your skin’, Byrne sings on his new track ‘Moisturizing Thing’ – a song about a Benjamin Button-style age reversal that his new wife doesn’t particularly like.
“I was thinking, ‘Oh, what if [the anti-ageing moisturiser] really does work? What would happen then? And I just took it to an extreme, where you age in reverse and wind up looking like a baby. You look so young that people think you’re an idiot or think that you don’t know anything.”
David Byrne and Mala Gaonkar attend the premiere of Caught Stealing in New York on August 26, 2025.
ANGELA WEISS / AFP
Byrne, the former frontman of experimental pop group Talking Heads, told RNZ in 2020 he is “less of a micro-manager these days “.
After “realising that he was doing okay”, he no longer reads any reviews of his work.
“Even a good review, they might throw a little zinger in there that might upset me in some ways.
“They might not mean to, they’re not being cruel, but they might say something like, Oh, for someone who can’t dance, he does okay.
“I’ve realised, ‘Oh, no, just don’t. Don’t bother with it. Just ignore all that stuff. Just do what you do.”
David Byrne dances in his “big suit” in the 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense.
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This September, Byrne kicked off his 68-date Who Is the Sky? world tour, with a group of impressive multi-instrumentalists bringing the album’s “highly orchestrated” songs to life onstage.
Members include a saxophone player who plays clarinet, dances and sings, a guitarist who also plays violin and a bass player who also plays cello.
“We can write a bassoon line or a tuba line or whatever, because we know that our player can do that really well. We’ll be able to successfully execute that.”
In this year’s shows, there is a lot of movement and choreography, Byrne says, and more singing dancers than ever before.
“I love the sound of a lot of voices singing and all the harmonies. [Who Is the Sky? ] continues on from American Utopia in that everyone is untethered, everyone can move around.”
David Byrne and his American Utopia band
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This set-up “democratises the band”, Byrne says.
“The drummers, who are usually relegated to some platform in the back, can come right to the front sometimes. The audience loves that. They cheer when they come to the front.
“I realised, yes, the audience loves acknowledging that all these people are making this together.”
David Byrne speaking at the 2019 New Yorker Festival.
ILYA S. SAVENOK
Both American Utopia and Who Is the Sky? are “under the umbrella” of Reasons to be Cheerful – the online magazine Byrne founded in 2019, which encapsulates his creative philosophy.
Onstage this year, he talks a little bit about how, as a society, we still haven’t quite processed the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns.
“We never really said, ‘What happened? Are we different now? Do we have different values now or anything like that? Have we realised anything after that experience? It’s just kind of like, ‘Oh, got through that. Let’s move on and forget it.”
While visiting Philadelphia on tour last month, Byrne attended the “wonderful” ‘No Kings’ protest against Donald Trump’s policies and actions.
The fact that few young people were in attendance was surprising, he says, but not necessarily disheartening.
“To some extent, in the US, there is a feeling amongst young people that this is just the way things are now, and we can’t do much about it. But I think that’s going to change.”
David Byrne on his upcoming return to NZ Music 101