Songoftheday 3/8/13 - Watch out you might get what you're after, cool babies strange but not a stranger...

Talking Heads - "Burning Down The House"
from the album Speaking In Tongues (1983)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #9 (one week)
Weeks in the Top-40: 11

Today's Song of the Day is by the influential modern rock quartet Talking Heads, who came together in New York after three of them (singer David Byrne, drummer Chris Frantz, and to-be bassist Tina Weymouth) met in school in Rhode Island. Adding Jerry Harrison from the Modern Lovers, they released their first album in 1977, which produced a minor hit with the classic "Psycho Killer". A year later, another album was released with the hilarious;y titled More Songs About Buildings and Food, and their cover of the Al Green soul hit "Take Me To The River" scored them their first top-40 hit in the US, Canada, and Australia. The group's next effort, Fear Of Music, paired them with producer Brian Eno and was much more risky, and with it they got their first club hit with "I Zimbra".

With the 80s underway the band's delve into world rhythms produced their funkiest and most revered set, Remain In Light, and the first single "Once In A Lifetime" became a moderate hit around the world, and their first top-40 hit in England. After the release and tour for that record, Byrne, the now-married Weymouths, and Harrison each recorded a side-project, with the couples' Tom Tom Club the most successful, with a top-40 US hit with "Genius Of Love" to show for it.

Invigorating after that break, the band came back together for what would be their most successful album, Speaking In Tongues, in 1983. Leaving Eno to produce the album by themselves, the band took all their previous influences and merged them together into a tight package signaled by the frantic first single, "Burning Down The House"....

(By the way, this "house" is in Union, New Jersey)

"Burning Down The House", with the help of MTVs support, became the band's biggest hit, reaching the top-10 on the pop chart for a week in the US, as well as #6 on the rock chart and #2 on the dance club list. (It did manage to stiff in David Byrne's native England, though.)

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In 1995, blues-rock legend Bonnie Raitt covered the song for her live album Road Tested...

Four years later, Welsh pop powerhouse Tom Jones teamed up with the Cardigans for a version that finally brought the song to the United Kingdom, reaching #7 on the chart there...