The Alternative Number Ones: Talking Heads’ “Sax And Violins”

In The Alternative Number Ones, I'm reviewing every #1 single in the history of the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks/Alternative Songs, starting with the moment that the chart launched in 1988. This column is a companion piece to The Number Ones, and it's for members only. Thank you to everyone who's helping to keep Stereogum afloat.

Talking Heads had an assignment: They had to come up with a song that might sound like something that they would make eight years into their future. The German art-house director Wim Wenders had been given his biggest-ever budget to make Until The End Of The World, a sort of sci-fi meditation on dreams and endings, and he set it in the near-future world of 1999. For the film's soundtrack, Wenders rounded up a list of some of the most beloved and respected musicians in the world, and he asked them to make the songs that they imagined themselves making in 1999.

That's a fun thought experiment, and when it's paired with an auteur with ultra-cool cachet, it's the type of stunt that few musicians can resist. The Talking Heads leader David Byrne wanted to participate, but he had a big roadblock in front of him: Talking Heads would not exist in 1999, and he knew it. Even in 1991, Talking Heads only theoretically existed. Before Talking Heads' soundtrack contribution "Sax And Violins" made it to #1 on the Modern Rock chart, Byrne announced the group's breakup. His bandmates found out about it when they read it in a newspaper.