More than 40 years after they stopped making music together, Talking Heads are collaborating again.
This time, David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz and Jerry Harrison are revisiting their shared history in Talking Heads: New Feeling, an upcoming book filled with rare photos, handwritten lyrics and personal essays.
The band announced the project on Wednesday, October 21 with the book set to arrive May 18, 2027. In a video shared on publisher Abrams Books’ Instagram, all four musicians sat down together to discuss the project.
Weymouth acknowledged how unusual it was for the group to come together to “write and curate the comprehensive coffee-table book” about their past. Byrne also noted the timing of the release, which comes 50 years after the band’s debut album, Talking Heads: 77.
“For this book, we pulled out handwritten lyrics, original album sketches, and private photos, some of which haven’t left our archive in over 40 years,” Harrison said.
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“Our book tells the story of three art students who met at the Rhode Island School of Design and found their way to C.B.G.B., the heart of New York’s punk and emerging new-wave scene in the 1970s,” Frantz added.
According to the publisher’s website, all four members contributed original essays. The book also features handwritten lyrics to songs including “Psycho Killer” and “Life During Wartime,” along with other material from the band’s archives.
The story runs through the 2023 re-release of Stop Making Sense, which marked a rare public reunion for the band members, who have not recorded music together in decades.
Since then, the four members have continued to make occasional appearances together. They participated in events surrounding the film’s re-release in 2023 and 2024, then reunited again in September for an interview moderated by Este Haim to celebrate the launch of their SiriusXM channel, Talking Heads Radio.
The book is part of a broader run of projects highlighting the band’s legacy. Over the past year, Talking Heads released Tentative Decisions: Demos & Live, a collection of early recordings, and announced plans to re-release their 1979 album, Fear of Music.
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