David Byrne and Daniel Pemberton Build a Song From Elon Musk’s Own Words

“Let Me Sell You a Dream,” the new song by Talking Heads frontman David Byrne and composer Daniel Pemberton, contains no line that Elon Musk did not say himself. Written for Alex Gibney’s documentary Musk, the track is assembled from phrases Musk has used in interviews and public statements, the same method Byrne applied on 2010’s Here Lies Love, where Imelda Marcos’s words became songs.

Byrne said the indirect approach was the point. Overtly criticizing Musk, he explained, “would be too easy and probably not as much fun”; better to get inside his subject’s head and let the character describe himself. He arranged the lyrics and melody before watching the film, and took the job partly because he knew Pemberton’s and Gibney’s work and thought it sounded like fun.

The song shares its premise with the film around it. Musk declined to be interviewed, so Gibney, who directed Going Clear and The Inventor, built his portrait from podcasts, earlier interviews, and documentary outtakes, alongside new interviews with Musk’s former partners, journalists, and engineers. It runs nearly four hours.

Its route to audiences has been uneven. Distributor Bleecker Street found that YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok refused to run the trailer as paid advertising, flagging it as political content. After the refusals drew press coverage, the platforms reversed course and called them errors. Musk opens in theaters on October 16.