Album · Talking Heads
More Songs About Buildings and Food by Talking Heads
More Songs About Buildings and Food is an album by Talking Heads, released in 1978. 3 songs from it have charted on rock radio countdowns, with 96 countdown appearances in total. The biggest is “Take Me to the River”, on 85 lists with a best position of #6.
More Songs About Buildings and Food, Talking Heads' second album, came out on Sire in 1978, and it's the first of three straight records the band made with Brian Eno producing. It's also where they started to lean into the beat: David Byrne's odd, twitchy yelp is still up front, but Tina Weymouth's bass and Chris Frantz's drums now get to push the songs around, with Jerry Harrison rounding out the lineup.
The result is art rock with its nerves wired to a funk groove, tense and jittery but suddenly danceable. "Take Me to the River", their cover of Al Green's 1974 song, turns it into a hypnotic simmer and became the band's first top 30 single, while "Artists Only" and "The Big Country" show off the wry, sideways songwriting.
It made them darlings of the critics, reaching No. 29 on Billboard's pop albums chart and No. 21 in the UK.
Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.
Songs from More Songs About Buildings and Food on radio countdowns
| # | Song | Strength | Lists | Best | #1s | Years |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Take Me to the River#382 of all time | 85 | #6 | – | 1982–2026 | |
| 2 | Artists Only | 9 | #512 | – | 1999–2022 | |
| 3 | The Big Country | 2 | #767 | – | 2003–2023 |
Only songs that appear on at least one countdown are listed. Release data from MusicBrainz.