David Byrne – “She Explains Things To Me”

In a couple of months, weird-music OG David Byrne will release Who Is The Sky?, his first solo album since 2018’s excellent, Broadway-bound American Utopia. Byrne, who has been extremely culturally present lately, recorded the LP with Harry Styles producer Kid Harpoon, and it’s got guests like Hayley Williams and St. Vincent, the latter of whom appears on lead single “Everybody Laughs.” Today, Byrne follows that song with a new one called “She Explains Things To Me.”

You should take that song title literally. “She Explains Things To Me” is an ode to someone who explains things to Byrne that Byrne can’t get on his own: “She explains what is happening in the movies we watch/ I ask, ‘Why do they do that? Why do they stop?/ Why do they do that on that TV show?’/ And I ask myself, ‘Wow, how does she know?'” It’s a bright, pretty song about needing an interpreter to figure out things that are happening in the world, and it makes me wish a whole lot of people had someone to patiently lay everything out like that. Here’s what Byrne says about it:

Many times, I have marveled at how a friend (usually a female friend) seems to clock what is going on in a film between characters way before I do. Sometimes I understand poetry, but sometimes I need help. Though inspired by the Solnit book men explain things to me, there is a huge difference — mansplaining is usually unasked for, in this case I am the one asking.

Listen below.

Who Is The Sky? is out 9/5 on Matador.