David Byrne (; born May 14, 1952) is an American musician, writer, visual artist, and filmmaker. He was a founding member and the principal songwriter, lead vocalist, and guitarist of the rock band Talking Heads.
Byrne was born in Dumbarton, Scotland and moved to the United States with his family as a child. He co-founded Talking Heads in 1975 in New York City. After releasing eight studio albums, including seven certified gold or platinum, Talking Heads disbanded in 1991.
Byrne has released solo recordings and worked with media including film, photography, opera, fiction, and non-fiction. He has collaborated with artists including Brian Eno, Fatboy Slim, X-Press 2, Ryuichi Sakamoto of Yellow Magic Orchestra, and St. Vincent. Byrne has received an Academy Award, a Grammy Award, a Special Tony Award, and a Golden Globe Award, and was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of Talking Heads.
David Byrne was born on May 14, 1952, in Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire, Scotland. Two years after his birth, the family moved to Canada, settling in Hamilton, Ontario. When Byrne was eight or nine years old they moved to Arbutus, Maryland, in the United States, where his father worked as an electronics engineer at Westinghouse Electric Corporation and his mother later became a teacher. Byrne grew up speaking with a Scottish accent but adopted an American one to fit in at school.
From a young age, he had a strong interest in music. His parents said that he would constantly play his phonograph from age three and he learned how to play the harmonica at age five. He was rejected from his middle school's choir because they said he was "off-key and too withdrawn". By high school, Byrne knew how to play the guitar, accordion, and violin. His father used his electronic engineering skills to modify a reel-to-reel tape recorder so that Byrne could make multitrack recordings.
Byrne graduated from Lansdowne High School in southwest Baltimore County, Maryland. He attended the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island, during the 1970–71 term and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore during the 1971–72 term before dropping out.
Byrne started his musical career in a high school band called Revelation. Between 1971 and 1972, he was one half of a duo named Bizadi with Marc Kehoe. Their repertoire consisted mostly of songs such as "April Showers", "96 Tears", "Dancing on the Ceiling" and Frank Sinatra songs. He returned to Providence in 1973 and formed a band called the Artistics with fellow RISD student Chris Frantz. The band dissolved in 1974. Byrne moved to New York City in May that year, and in September of that year, Frantz and his girlfriend Tina Weymouth followed suit. After Byrne and Frantz were unable to find a bass guitar player in New York for nearly two years, Weymouth learned to play the instrument. While working day jobs in late 1974, they were contemplating a band.
By January 1975, Talking Heads were practicing and playing together, while still working normal day jobs. They played their first gig in June.
In May 1976, Byrne quit his day job, and the three-piece band signed to Sire Records in November of that year. Byrne was the youngest member of the band. Multi-instrumentalist Jerry Harrison, previously of the Modern Lovers, joined the band in 1977. The band released eight studio albums to acclaim and commercial success. Four albums achieved gold status (exceeding 500,000 in sales) and two others were certified double-platinum (exceeding two million in sales). Talking Heads were pioneers of the new wave music scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s with popular and creative music videos in regular rotation on MTV.
In 1988 the band went on hiatus during which Byrne launched a solo career and the other members pursued their own projects. Talking Heads reunited in 1991 to record the single "Sax and Violins" and officially broke up in December 1991. In 2002, Talking Heads was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where they reunited to play four tracks: "Psycho Killer", "Burning Down the House", "Life During Wartime", and their cover version of Al Green's 1974 song "Take Me to the River".
Solo album career: 1979–1981, 1989–present
During his time in the band, Byrne took on outside projects, collaborating with Brian Eno during 1979 and 1981 on the studio album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, which attracted acclaim for its early use of sampling and found sounds. Following this record, Byrne focused his attention on Talking Heads. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts was re-released for its 25th anniversary in early 2006, with new bonus tracks. In keeping with the spirit of the original album, stems for two of the songs' component tracks were released under Creative Commons licenses and a remix contest website was launched.
Rei Momo (1989) was the second solo studio album by Byrne (the first after leaving Talking Heads), and features mainly Afro-Cuban, Afro-Hispanic, and Brazilian song styles, including popular dances such as merengue, son cubano, samba, mambo, cumbia, cha-cha-chá, bomba and charanga. His third solo studio album, Uh-Oh (1992), featured a brass section and was driven by tracks such as "Girls On My Mind" and "The Cowboy Mambo (Hey Lookit Me Now)". His fourth solo studio album, David Byrne (1994), was a more proper rock record, with Byrne playing most of the instruments, leaving percussion for session musicians. "Angels" and "Back in the Box" were the two main singles released from the album. The first one entered the U.S. Modern Rock Tracks chart, reaching No. 24. For his fifth studio effort, the emotional Feelings (1997), Byrne employed a brass orchestra called Black Cat Orchestra. His sixth, Look into the Eyeball (2001), continued the same musical exploration of Feelings, but was compiled of more upbeat tracks, like those found on Uh-Oh. The album cover and packaging for Feelings was designed by Stefan Sagmeister.
Grown Backwards (2004), released by Nonesuch Records, used orchestral string arrangements, and includes two operatic arias as well as a rework of X-Press 2 collaboration "Lazy". He also launched a North American and Australian tour with the Tosca Strings. This tour ended with Los Angeles, San Diego and New York shows in August 2005. He also collaborated with Selena on her fifth and final studio album Dreaming of You (1995), with "God's Child (Baila Conmigo)".
Byrne and Eno reunited for their second collaborative studio album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today (2008). He assembled a band to tour worldwide for the album for a six-month period from late 2008 through early 2009 on the Songs of David Byrne and Brian Eno Tour. In 2012, he released a collaborative album with American singer-songwriter St. Vincent called Love This Giant. The album featured both Byrne and St. Vincent on vocals and guitar, backed by a brass section. To promote the album, both artists travelled throughout North America, Europe, and Australia on the Love This Giant Tour in 2012 and 2013, with each performing pieces from their career in the album's distinctive brass band style alongside those composed for the album.
In January 2018, Byrne announced his first solo studio album in fourteen years. American Utopia was released in March through Todo Mundo and Nonesuch Records. He also released the album's first single, "Everybody's Coming to My House", which he co-wrote with Eno. The subsequent tour – which showcased songs from American Utopia alongside highlights from his Talking Heads and solo career to date – was described by NME as being perhaps "the most ambitious and impressive live show of all time", blurring the lines "between gig and theatre, poetry and dance".
In June 2025, Byrne released a new lead single "Everybody Laughs" and announced his next solo album Who Is the Sky?, with all songs being arranged by Ghost Train Orchestra. The album was released the following September via Matador, with the Who Is the Sky? Tour starting the same month. The album also features St. Vincent, Hayley Williams of Paramore, and Tom Skinner of the Smile.