4:29
Talking Heads: 77, 1977
Written by David Byrne
This song is a jolt of uncharacteristic optimism from a band that often came from a dark or detached place. It's a song about transformation; the narrator has been "pulled up" from despair into joy, helped by some unseen hand. Maybe it's divine intervention, maybe friends or seven just self-actualization, but either way, David Byrne sounds genuinely elated here, not anxious. Musically, it’s all taut motion: twitchy guitars, propulsive drumming, frantic yodel-like scatting, and ascending scales that mirror the lyric's upward momentum. The band build tension and release it in one cathartic rush, a technique that would echo years later in the loud-quiet dynamics of Pixies and Nirvana.
Byrne's vocal is gloriously unhinged, half-yelped, half-exultant, with that strange laugh on "There’s really no hurry, I'll eat in a while," a small human crack in an already eccentric performance. Beneath the quirk, though, is real warmth. Indeed, I read that its placement at the end of the album was intentional, designed to provide a sense of light and catharsis after the darker themes elsewhere on the album.
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