Talking Heads’ David Byrne Performs a Tiny Desk Concert

If you’ve seen a David Byrne con­cert in recent years, you know that he per­forms with a large ensem­ble of musi­cians, each car­ry­ing their own instru­ments across the stage, all while mov­ing in intri­cate­ly chore­o­graphed pat­terns. On his cur­rent tour, Byrne and his band stopped by NPR’s stu­dio and played a very dif­fer­ent kind of show—a show tight­ly squeezed behind NPR’s Tiny Desk. As you will see above, they per­formed two songs (“Every­body Laughs” and “Don’t Be Like That”) from Byrne’s new album, along with two Talk­ing Heads favorites, “(Noth­ing But) Flow­ers” and “Life Dur­ing Wartime.” Enjoy!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

David Byrne Explains How the “Big Suit” He Wore in Stop Mak­ing Sense Was Inspired by Japan­ese Kabu­ki The­atre

A Behind-the-Scenes Tour of NPR’s Tiny Desk Con­cert

Watch a Very Ner­vous, 23-Year-Old David Byrne and Talk­ing Heads Per­form­ing Live in NYC (1976)

Watch David Byrne Prac­tice His Dance Moves for Stop Mak­ing Sense in New­ly Released Behind-the-Scenes Footage

224 Books About Music in David Byrne’s Per­son­al Library