The room › Artists › Talking Heads
Where to start with Talking Heads
Start with Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) - 2005 Remaster — Remain in Light, 1980. That is the track sitting closest to the centre of all 29 Talking Heads tracks in Zubissou Sounds — a listening room of 15,847 tracks placed one at a time by hand, not an algorithm.
This page is not a discography and not a ranking. It describes exactly one thing: the 29 Talking Heads tracks that one person put in one room, and where they sit relative to each other. The starting point above is chosen by a rule you can check — of the 29 tracks, it is the one nearest the average position on the four knobs the room runs on, and where two sit equally close the one on a named record wins. Nothing here calls any record better than any other.
The mood knob swings 68 points across these tracks, the widest of the four — it is the axis this artist actually travels along in this room.
Three ways in
The one track, if you only play one
Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) - 2005 Remaster — Remain in Light, 1980. Of the 29 Talking Heads tracks here, this one sits closest to the average of all of them across the four knobs the room runs on. It is the least surprising thing in the collection, which is exactly what an entry point should be.
If you want the melancholy end
Drugs — The Name of the Band is Talking Heads, 1979. The lowest mood reading of any Talking Heads track in the room (28 out of 100). This is as far towards melancholy as the collection goes.
If you want the euphoric end
Psycho Killer — Popular Favorites 1976 - 1992 / Sand in the Vaseline, 1992. The highest mood reading here, at 96 out of 100 — a 68-point swing across the collection towards euphoric.
Where Talking Heads sits in the room
Zubissou Sounds does not have playlists or genres you click. It has knobs. Every track carries a position on each one, set by hand when the track was added, and you find music by setting the room to a state rather than by searching for a name. These are Talking Heads's average coordinates and the range they cover.
All four run 0–100. They are placed by a person, not derived from audio analysis or from any streaming service's feature data.
What is here, record by record
| Album | Year | Tracks |
|---|---|---|
| Speaking in Tongues | 1983 | 11 |
| Remain in Light | 1980 | 11 |
| The Name of the Band is Talking Heads | 1979 | 4 |
| Popular Favorites 1976 - 1992 / Sand in the Vaseline | 1992 | 1 |
| Remain in Light (Deluxe Version) | 1980 | 1 |
Every Talking Heads track in the room
| Track | Album | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Drugs | The Name of the Band is Talking Heads | 1979 |
| I Zimbra | The Name of the Band is Talking Heads | 1979 |
| Life During Wartime | The Name of the Band is Talking Heads | 1979 |
| Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On) - 2005 Remaster | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| Crosseyed and Painless - 2005 Remaster | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| Double Groove - Unfinished Outtake | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| Houses in Motion - 2005 Remaster | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| Listening Wind - 2005 Remaster | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| Once in a Lifetime - 2005 Remaster | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| Right Start - Unfinished Outtake | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| Seen and Not Seen - 2005 Remaster | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| The Great Curve - 2005 Remaster | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| The Overload - 2005 Remaster | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| Unison - Unfinished Outtake | Remain in Light | 1980 |
| Fela's Riff - Unfinished Outtake | Remain in Light (Deluxe Version) | 1980 |
| Houses In Motion | The Name of the Band is Talking Heads | 1980 |
| Burning Down the House - 2005 Remaster | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| Burning Down the House - Alternate Version | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| Girlfriend Is Better - 2005 Remaster | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| I Get Wild / Wild Gravity - 2005 Remaster | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| Making Flippy Floppy - 2005 Remaster | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| Moon Rocks - 2005 Remaster | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| Pull up the Roots - 2005 Remaster | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| Slippery People | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| Swamp - 2005 Remaster | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody) - 2005 Remaster | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| Two Note Swivel - Unfinished Outtake | Speaking in Tongues | 1983 |
| Psycho Killer | Popular Favorites 1976 - 1992 / Sand in the Vaseline | 1992 |
| The Good Thing - 2005 Remaster | — | — |
Near neighbours in this room
These are the artists whose average knob position sits nearest to Talking Heads's in this room. It is a coordinate match, not a claim that they sound alike.
- Where to start with Michael Jackson — pop, 17 tracks
- Where to start with The Rapture — dance-punk, 11 tracks
- Where to start with Weezer — alternative rock, 11 tracks
What the open databases say
MusicBrainz lists Talking Heads as a group, from New York, the United States and formed in 1974. Its contributors tag the artist new wave, post-punk, art punk, art pop and funk rock. These are the open database's facts, not mine — you can check them against the MusicBrainz entry.
Questions
How many Talking Heads tracks are in Zubissou Sounds?
There are 29, across 5 albums. 28 of them carry a date, running from 1979 to 1992. That is the whole of what this room holds — it is one person's collection, not a discography.
Is this a best-of, or a ranking?
No. Nothing here is ranked and no track is called better than another. The starting point is picked by arithmetic — the track closest to the centre of all the others on four measured axes — and the rule is printed above so you can disagree with it.
Where do the knob numbers come from?
They are set by hand, one track at a time, by the person who added the track. They are not audio analysis and not a Spotify feature. Mood, energy, density and the head/body balance each run 0 to 100. All 29 of these tracks have been read individually — nothing on this page is running on a default.
Can I listen to these here?
Not yet from this page. Zubissou Sounds is in private beta — the room itself plays through Spotify, and 29 of these 29 tracks are matched to a Spotify ID and ready to play the moment you are in. The waitlist form is at the bottom of this page.