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How Music Works

How Music Works
How Music Works (Book Cover).jpg
Author David Byrne
Country United States
Language English
Subject Memoir / music theory
Published September 12, 2012 McSweeney's
Pages 352
ISBN

How Music Works is a non-fiction book by David Byrne, a musician, writer, and public figure best known for his work with the group Talking Heads. He discusses the form and influence of music in a non-linear narrative fashion, using a variety of experiences from his career to create something part autobiography and part music theory. The book was published through McSweeney's on September 12, 2012, and was named as one of Amazon.com's "Best Books of the Month" in that same month. It has received mainly positive reviews.

The book, despite being non-fiction, has a highly non-linear structure with manual-like information, elements of Byrne's autobiography, and anthropological data on music theory all intermixed, each chapter able to stand alone. Byrne looks at the influence of music, even in such subtle forms as birdsongs, from a rational perspective that eschews romanticism. Overall, he writes that no music "is aimed exclusively at either the body or the head", with complex human beings interacting with it on different levels.

He discusses his career with Talking Heads, detailing many points of background for their music. He describes how the lyrics to the 1980 song "Once in a Lifetime" drew inspiration from a recording of a preacher as well as how the oversize suits worn in their concert film Stop Making Sense drew inspiration from ancient Japanese theatre. Byrne avoids bringing back up the personality conflicts leading to the band's demise, and he instead goes through their history, album by album, to detail his views on performances versus recordings as well as the effects of money and fame. In particular, he spends a chapter on the CBGB nightclub and the underlying conditions that supported the development of new, avant-garde artists such as Patti Smith, Ramones, Blondie, and others besides his own band.


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