B-side "Give Me Back My Name" Format 7" single Length 4:19 | Released September 1985 Genre Pop rock, new wave | |
Recorded October 1984 – March 1985 | ||
"Road to Nowhere" is a rock song written by David Byrne for the 1985 Talking Heads album Little Creatures. It also appeared on Best of Talking Heads, Sand in the Vaseline: Popular Favorites, the Once in a Lifetime box set and the Brick box set. The song was released as a single in 1985 and reached number 25 on the Billboard Mainstream Rock Tracks and number 6 in the British, German and South African singles charts. It also made number 8 on the Dutch Top 40.
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Production
"I wanted to write a song that presented a resigned, even joyful look at doom," recalls David Byrne in the liner notes of Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads. "At our deaths and at the apocalypse… (always looming, folks). I think it succeeded. The front bit, the white gospel choir, is kind of tacked on, 'cause I didn't think the rest of the song was enough… I mean, it was only two chords. So, out of embarrassment, or shame, I wrote an intro section that had a couple more in it."
The video for the song was directed by Byrne and Stephen R. Johnson and features the band and various objects revolving, as if in their own "road to nowhere". It was nominated for "Best Video of the Year" at the MTV Video Music Awards 1986. Some parts were shot in the back yard and pool of actor Stephen Tobolowsky, who was co-writing Byrne's film True Stories at the time. Director Johnson re-used some of the effects techniques in award-winning videos for Peter Gabriel the following year: "Sledgehammer" and "Big Time".