Girlfriend Is Better

Everything in "Girlfriend Is Better" seems to exist in a state of cheerful instability. The guitar figure that runs through it has a slightly askew quality, like a sentence that trails off before finishing, and the rhythm section — particularly Jerry Harrison's keyboard fills — creates a surface that's propulsive but never quite settles into comfort. Byrne's vocals are theatrical here in a way that's simultaneously sincere and self-aware, stretching syllables in unexpected places and landing on phrases with the enthusiasm of someone who has just discovered that language is a performance. The production from Speaking in Tongues is bright and live-sounding, with a warmth that separates it from the cooler textures of their earlier work. The lyrics spiral around questions of perception and preference, using the domestic logic of comparison to gesture toward something stranger about how we construct desire and meaning. There's a persistent absurdist humor underneath, the sense that the song is in on a joke that it refuses to fully share. This was Talking Heads at their most pop-accessible without being simple, finding a way to make cerebral concerns genuinely danceable. You'd put this on at the start of a party that hasn't decided what kind of party it wants to be — energetic enough to move people, weird enough to signal that something more interesting might happen.