David Byrne (born May 14, 1952) is a Scottish musician best known as a founder member of the New Wave band Talking Heads. His collaboration with Brian Eno on the ground-breaking album My Life in the Bush of Ghosts attracted considerable critical acclaim, and represented a significant step forward in the evolution of sampling as a legitimate musical endeavour.

His work has been extensively used in movie soundtracks, most notably in collaboration with Cong Su on Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor, which won an Oscar for Best Original Score. Byrne also directed True Stories, a collage of quirky Americana, as well as the films Île Aiye and Between the Teeth''

Byrne releases his own works on his label Luaka Bop, a world music label which also releases the work of artists Cornershop, Os Mutantes, Los De Abajo, and others.

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  • (On why he hates the term "world music"): "It’s a way of relegating this 'thing' into the realm of something exotic and therefore cute, weird but safe, because exotica is beautiful but irrelevant."


Another David Byrne is a politician.