Stop Making Sense

Stop Making Sense is 1984 album by Talking Heads, the soundtrack to the film of the same name. The album features only nine of the songs from the movie, many of them heavily edited. The album spent over two years (118 weeks) on the Billboard 200 chart.

Byrne’s intention was not to make a traditional soundtrack album, but to have it be a separate experience. Limited pressings of the original LP version featured a full color picture book wrapped around the album jacket. Regular versions had many of the pictures and captions on the album’s inner sleeve. In 1999, to correspond with the theatrical re-release of the movie, the album was extended and remastered, restoring all of the songs from the movie with only very minor edits. The newly included tracks feature Frantz’s original drumming from the concert recordings. In 2003, the album was ranked number 345 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.



Track listing
All songs written by David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth except as noted.


Side one
“Psycho Killer” (Byrne, Frantz, Weymouth) – 4:28
“Swamp” – 3:50 (LP) 4:28 (cassette, CD)
“Slippery People” – 3:35 (LP) 4:13 (different mix; cassette, CD)
“Burning Down the House” – 4:14
“Girlfriend Is Better” – 3:32 (LP) 5:07 (cassette, CD)

Side two
“Once in a Lifetime” (Byrne, Brian Eno, Frantz, Harrison, Weymouth) – 4:34 (LP) 5:34 (cassette, CD)
“What a Day That Was” (Byrne) – 5:08 (LP) 6:30 (cassette, CD)
“Life During Wartime” – 4:52 (LP) 5:52 (cassette, CD)
“Take Me to the River” (Al Green, Teenie Hodges) – 5:59