Talking Heads have never really stricken me as an especially '80s-sounding group (although I do love them).  Does anyone think that they're actually early indie rock, the way they combine funk, etc. into their music, are experimental, nerdy, etc.?  Not to mention many '90s and '00s indie bands copy facets of their music.

Yes, they are.

Yes, they are.


The Heads almost seem like the anti-'80s band, in the way that they were experimental, nervous, cautious about materialism, etc.  But at the same time, they wore '80s clothing and used tons of synthesizers and put videos on MTV.  "Once in a Lifetime" seems like a foreshadowing of what the '80s would turn out to be, whereas "Wild Wild Life", while probably the most '80s Talking Heads song, is politely critical about the materialism of the 1980s.

The Heads almost seem like the anti-'80s band, in the way that they were experimental, nervous, cautious about materialism, etc.  But at the same time, they wore '80s clothing and used tons of synthesizers and put videos on MTV.  "Once in a Lifetime" seems like a foreshadowing of what the '80s would turn out to be, whereas "Wild Wild Life", while probably the most '80s Talking Heads song, is politely critical about the materialism of the 1980s.


I'm of the theory that "alternative" rock really started with R.E.M's Murmur in 1983, though Remain in Light and earlier TH albums like Songs About Building and Food were certainly highly influential. Bands like Sonic Youth, Pixies, and Husker Du through the '80s refined it.