Happy birthday to Tina Weymouth, who turns 74 today!

Occasionally, Talking Heads’ music would rival David Byrne’s lyrics and vocal delivery for strangeness. Tina Weymouth’s basslines in ‘Making Flippy Floppy’ made for one of those occasions.

Although Byrne was also credited with playing the instrument on Speaking Tongues (1983), it’s hard to imagine anyone but Weymouth having played bass on ‘Floppy’. The playing is utterly charateristic of her feel for space and when to play with emphasis. Weymouth had never played bass before Talking Heads, and her lack of technical virtuosity shows, but it’s her disregard for flashiness that helps amplify the grooves across Tongues, their funkiest album. Weymouth hits the One every bar, but the rest of her verse phrases sound far less certain; it’s as though the bass is questioning itself during the pitch-bends.  

In the writing process for Tongues and the preceding album, Remain in Light, the band would build songs piece-by-piece, layering instruments on top of one another. ‘Floppy’ presumably started with bass, such is the extent to which it dominates the rhythms and melodic progressions. Weymouth leaves enough space for the stuttering guitar in the first minute, and the burbling synth in the chorus.

When the main rhythm guitar part comes in at 1:09, and Weymouth switches to more straightforwardly bouncy, happy melodies, it comes as a relief. The choruses on Speaking Tongues often served this purpose: the verses would be uneasy before a joyful, singalong release.

After the first instrumental passage (starting at 2:43), the next section is a kind of chorus but with different words. That was a theme on this album, where Byrne would keep the vocal melody but change the lyrics. There’s a great transition, with the rhythm guitar subtly coming in on the right speaker toward the end of the instrumental passage and then the guitar on the left speaker playing more obviously with the return of the vocals.

Some of Byrne’s lyrics are open to interpretation (“There are no big secrets”). The line “Still don’t make no sense” has been interpreted as a comment on the ambiguous nature of the lyrics themselves. Some of them are just really fun: “We have great big bodies / We got great big heads”. After his final lines (“We kill the beast / Kill it!”), there’s a chance to enjoy Weymouth’s bassline without as much accompaniment, before the great scratchy guitar returns and a wailing guitar (probably played by Alex Weir) takes us out.