David Byrne is no stranger to being called a genius — and he doesn’t seem to mind it. Creative, innovative, restless? All of that and more. Musician, writer, director, choreographer, and singer, he’s never been one to fit into a box. His art has always been attuned to the times, society, and the habits that shape us. Leading Talking Heads, he sang about all of that. In his solo career, he went even further.

I never got the chance to see Talking Heads live (only in theaters), David Byrne? I never miss him. Over the past 25 years, I’ve had the privilege of seeing him live five times. He might repeat a few steps, but it’s never the same. I love it. So today, I celebrate: after a long seven years, we have new material to listen to.

Since the days of Talking Heads, David Byrne has operated like a sonic anthropologist — someone who observes human behavior with curious strangeness and translates it into rhythm, movement, and poetry. His career has been marked by a constant search to turn the mundane into the sublime, whether through robotic dances, disconcerting lyrics, or compositions that explore the human condition with irony, compassion, and a touch of absurdity.

His new album, Who Is the Sky?, released today (June 10, 2025), marks his first solo work in six years. Produced by Kid Harpoon and arranged in collaboration with the Ghost Train Orchestra, the record brings together 12 tracks that continue Byrne’s tradition of translating universal human experiences into a musical format that is both cerebral and accessible. Contributors include Hayley Williams (Paramore), Tom Skinner (The Smile), St. Vincent, and Mauro Refosco, forming a rich sonic tapestry with echoes of chamber orchestra, experimental pop, and worldbeat.

The opening and title track, Everybody Laughs, serves as a key to the entire work. The song blends exuberant orchestral pop with a light, almost playful groove over which Byrne recites a list of everyday actions: living, dying, laughing, crying, sleeping, staring at the ceiling. In another voice, it might sound banal or didactic — but in Byrne’s, it becomes a kind of collective mantra, at once observational and cathartic. The music grows in complexity and intensity, culminating in a climax where he and St. Vincent sing together with emotional surrender, almost shouting, as if trying to purge the strangeness of being here, alive, amidst the chaos.

In the song’s video, directed by Gabriel Barcia-Colombo, this tension between banality and transcendence is portrayed visually. The aesthetic is cold and modern, dialoging with the logic of digital installations. Bodies in choreographed positions interact with elements that resemble masks, monitors, mirrors, and control mechanisms. It’s a theatrical and controlled scene — a gallery of humanity observing itself, as if we were in an emotional zoo.

The video doesn’t try to tell a story, but to evoke sensations. Laughter — the song’s title — is not exactly joyful, but an ambiguous expression that might be relief or a way of hiding pain. The duality Byrne evokes in the music is reflected in the image: there’s beauty and strangeness, clarity and confusion. It’s a kind of choreography of existence, where the characters seem to be both acting and genuinely living.

Byrne has previously said that the word “everybody” often appears in his lyrics because of its anthropological function: to capture the collective without erasing the individual. In the case of “Everybody Laughs”, the focus lies at that intersection between the personal and the universal. Laughter is a common gesture, but never exactly the same — it can be liberating, nervous, sad, or sarcastic. And it’s this multiplicity of meanings that gives the song its power.

Kid Harpoon’s production contributes to this accessibility without sacrificing experimental character. Known for polishing pop with elegance, Harpoon helps shape Byrne’s eccentric edges into something that sounds light, danceable, but never superficial. According to the producer, walking through New York while listening to the song’s demo made him feel like “we’re all the same.” The absurd beauty of existence — that seems to be the real theme.

Who Is the Sky? was born from notes Byrne took at the end of the American Utopia era, a period during which he deeply reflected on the purpose of art and his own voice. Instead of answers, he found new questions — and wrapped them in cinematic, humorous, and deeply human songs. The album as a whole seems to try to answer, or at least echo, the big question implied in the title: Who is the sky? Or perhaps: Who are we beneath it?

With a world tour announced for the second half of the year, featuring a 13-piece mobile band, Byrne once again proposes a spectacle that goes beyond music — a collective ritual where we dance, think, and laugh. Everybody Laughs, then, is not just a song. It’s an invitation to communion, to accept life as a mix of grace and strangeness. And few living artists are as capable of translating that with such empathy and style as David Byrne.

There’s no date yet for a Brazilian leg of the tour, but given his strong connection with the country, we can keep our hopes up.