friendssharingmusic:

Talking Heads - I Wish You Wouldn’t Say That

An early b-side from the group’s CBGB days, this track shows how distinctive the Talking Heads were from their contemporaries. There’s a lot of keyboard atmosphere while the bassline gives the track a smooth bounce. The percussion, guitar and vocals steadily becomes weirder and more intense until the final outburst at the end. This gradual build and release was not a common structure for the band, though it is prominent on their debut. As with a lot of the early stuff, Byrne’s vocal character is really the heart of the song, as his inquisitive innocence questioning serves as the primary marker of the mood shift from asking nicely to making demands.

The most natural reading for me is a cathartic mantra, the narrator gradually building assurance until the frenzied ending, and thus the track is not an emotional journey or development but a process—though the process is not quite a purging of frustration and not quite a fortification of the nerves.