Talking Heads to Publish ‘New Feeling,’ a Book Drawn From Their Own Archive

Talking Heads have announced a book. Talking Heads: New Feeling arrives May 18 via Abrams Books, a date that also marks the 50th anniversary of the band’s debut, Talking Heads: 77. All four members, David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison, and Chris Frantz, contribute original essays.

The book is built largely from material the band kept to itself. Harrison described pulling out “handwritten lyrics, original album sketches, and private photos, some of which haven’t left our archive in over 40 years.” Outside voices appear alongside the four: Lorde, Debbie Harry, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Jeff Bridges are among the contributors. New Feeling also collects behind-the-scenes photographs from Stop Making Sense, the 1984 concert film that returned to theaters for a limited run in 2023. Ahead of that re-release, Harrison said watching the film again “revives the joy we had together.”

The announcement follows another archival project. On October 1, the group detailed a super-deluxe edition of their third album, Fear of Music, out November 13 on Rhino, adding alternate versions, studio outtakes, and previously unreleased recordings of two full concerts from the period. A dedicated SiriusXM station launches alongside it.

Two projects, one impulse. Talking Heads spent their active years treating the archive as material rather than monument, and they are now opening it at their own pace, on their own terms.