REMAIN IN LIGHT
Angelique Kidjo
2018

As an undergrad, I remember saying “The Talking Heads [sic] are the most underrated band in rock history.” I was going off an understanding of rock history shaped by classic rock radio, Rolling Stone magazine, and T-shirt shops. And even I was not really listening to Talking Heads all that much – I’d bought a copy of Remain in Light, their most acclaimed album, and I really liked it. Later, when I listened to their other albums, Remain in Light faded quite a lot in my estimation. It remains a transitional album in my ears, a mix of the New Wave and Brian Eno experimentation that defined the band’s early years and the branch into funk and the polyrhythm of Fela Kuti. I preferred the interpretation of those songs on Stop Making Sense to the studio recordings.

Kidjo’s reinterpretation of the album reasserts the African influence on the album. The instrumentation and arrangements she’s applied to these songs gives them such life. She gives some of these songs new tempos, some of them new brass and woodwind parts, new grooves, but they’re all perfectly suited interpretations of the songs. In her writing about recording the album for Pitchfork, Kidjo talks about how her approach was to build from percussion back into the full song. I wonder if Byrne borrowed that concept back when constructing the stage version of American Utopia, where every member of the cast carries their instrument, so many of them drums. 

While I love David Byrne with my whole heart, I think few would argue that he’s traditionally as strong a singer as Kidjo. But I adore that she does not pursue making these songs as melodic as possible. Kidjo sings Remain in Light with a great sense of humor, pushing the momentary anger, frustration, revelation over diva architecture. The way she sings “Once in a Lifetime” is with so much joy and naivete, a song to so many defined by that televangelist ecstasy of Byrne. The harmonies she adds throughout fit beautifully – her new vocal additions (generally not captured in lyric sheets, likely in Fon or Yoruba) feel equally natural.

This album highlights the false ceiling of my imagined canon of estimation as a young firebrand. It’s not that I was wrong that Talking Heads are more interesting than Aerosmith or AC/DC – it’s that I imagined I’d already heard the world’s most important music at twenty years old and everything else would just be “filling in gaps.” At that age I’d only read the name Angelique Kidjo. I didn’t imagine how she could blow the roof off the pop canon. This month, as I ease back into writing about music, I’m writing about a lot of that pop canon I’ve loved all these years – I’m hoping next time I have the confidence to push myself a little farther afield.

KEY TRACKS: “Crosseyed and Painless,” “Once in a Lifetime,” “Listening Wind”
CATALOG CHOICE: Aye
NEXT STOP: Who Is William Onyeabor?, William Onyeabor
AFTER THAT: The Indestructible Beat of Soweto, Vol. 1