Years ago
I was an angry young man
And I'd pretend
That I was a billboard
Standing tall
By the side of the road
I fell in love
With a beautiful highway
This used to be real estate
Now it's only fields and trees
Where, where is the town.
Now, it's nothing but flowers
The highways and cars
Were sacrificed for agriculture
I thought that we'd start over
But I guess I was wrong.
Our Sunday song, as spring begins to hit full bloom, is from those true innovators of late-70s and 80s postpunk, Talking Heads, and a little bit more. Like yesterday’s Franz Ferdinand, certainly influenced by the New York band, the lyrics are packed with wry humour, and here frontman David Byrne (also born in Scotland – Dumbarton near Glasgow) cleverly reverses the standard vision of spoiling urban sprawl, and tells a tale of where once “there was a Pizza Hut, it’s now all covered in daisies”, and “once there were making lots, now it’s a peaceful oasis”. Nostalgia for concrete and roads describes a scene where nature agriculture has returned, perhaps post-apocalyptic event. The words are also portrayed with some amusing typography in the video.
This beautifully constructed song, with Chris Frantz’s percussion, and Tina Weymouth’s humorously sliding bass, also captures colourful, blooming scenes in the actual sound, enhanced by that great guitar innovator, Johnny Marr guesting here, whose jangling riffs lift this to an even higher level, and some backing vocals by Kirsty MacColl. It also came out during a period when African music, such as the guitar sound of Zimbabwe's the Bhundhu Boys, who mixed chimurenga music with pop.
Flowers was recorded in 1987 for Talking Heads’ 1988 album Naked, and a bittersweet nostalgia also surrounds everything about it, with all the players in the video shown with their towns of birth captioned, including Marr's Manchester. Marr and the Smiths had not long split up, and Naked was Talking Heads’ last album after their own disagreements. And yet they can look back at this as one of their finest works, when everything was in perfect harmony.
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