
David Byrne on AI, Bike Lanes, and Finding His Sound with Kid Harpoon
At WXPN before his three-night Met run, Byrne talks touring, Who Is The Sky, and AI
David Byrne stopped by WXPN for a conversation with host Dan Reed ahead of his three-night stand at Philadelphia’s Metropolitan Opera House, part of a 50-date American tour supporting his latest album, Who Is The Sky.
The tour finds Byrne working with a large ensemble, recalling the ambitious scale of his American Utopia shows. “There’s more that could go wrong,” he acknowledged, “but I have a really, really good team.” When asked about nerves before shows, Byrne admitted he still experiences them: “A little bit,” he said, noting that second and third nights at the same venue tend to be better once everyone stops worrying, “Are they gonna like us?”
Who Is The Sky came together through an unexpected partnership with producer Kid Harpoon, known for his work with Harry Styles, Maggie Rogers, Miley Cyrus, Florence + the Machine, and many others. Byrne explained he didn’t use a formula to select him. Instead, he noticed Harpoon’s productions sounded “really appropriate to the songs with the artist he was working with.” The collaboration was facilitated by Byrne’s publicist, who happened to be friends with the producer.
The album also features Ghost Train Orchestra, whose Moondog cover album caught Byrne’s attention a year before recording. “I thought, ah, that could be the kind of sound or texture that these songs want,” he said.
Reed noted Byrne’s keen observational eye throughout his career, calling him a “people investigator.” Byrne responded with “I’ve been called an anthropologist from Mars, and there’s a certain truth to that. I really am trying to figure out like, why are we the way we are and why am I the way I am?”
The conversation touched on Byrne’s continued commitment to cycling (he rode his bike to the interview) and his cautious optimism about New York’s congestion pricing reducing traffic. On artificial intelligence in music, Byrne distinguished between useful tools (like the technology used to separate instruments on old Beatles recordings) and what he sees as problematic: AI systems that scrape existing music to generate soundalike content. After hearing AI produce a song that sounded like “Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles mixed together,” Byrne called it ‘an endless nightmare.’