Talking Heads “Speaking in Tongues” released 35 years ago today, June 1st, 1983. Their fifth studio release, Speaking in Tongues was their most successful to that point, propelled by their only Top 10 hit, “Burning Down the House,” which hit #9. “Burning Down the House” – like the rest of Speaking in Tongues (which Rolling Stone’s David Fricke called “the album that finally obliterates the thin line separating arty white pop music and deep black funk”) – is both new wavey and seriously funky. The story goes that Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz had just seen a Parliament-Funkadelic concert at Madison Square Garden and at band rehearsal kept yelling “Burn down the house!” – a P-Funk audience chant, inspiring David Byrne to write the lyrics. I loved “Burning Down the House;” MTV had it on heavy rotation so I saw the video about a million times during the summer of ‘83. The rest of the art-funk album is super-groovy, too. I especially love “Girlfriend is Better” (the lyrics from that track supplied the title for Talking Heads’ concert film Stop Making Sense, a truly iconic 80′s moment for oversized suits and shoulders), the deep swampy beat of “Swamp,” the hypnotic post-punk vibe on “Pull Up the Roots” and “This Must Be the Place (Native Melody).”