The five artists Talking Heads blended to create their sound: “Our own kind of nerdy white person way”The further you dive into the career of seminal New York art rock outfit Talking Heads, the harder it gets to describe exactly where they were coming from artistically, and the more varied their pool of influences seemed to get. Songs became increasingly abstract in their presentation, forming around single repeated grooves and intense rhythmic interplay, while the lyrics became considerably more obtuse. “I mean, we like a lot of funk music,” Byrne explained, “But then we’re kind of mixing it in with art rock. We felt that any kind of funky stuff we did, we had to do in our own kind of nerdy white person way.” To be frank, this is how they were always destined to sound, and they somehow managed to make it land in a way that felt agreeable to wider audiences.