All four members of Talking Heads will be in the same room on 28 September, at SiriusXM's New York studios, for a conversation hosted by Este Haim. It is being recorded live in front of an audience at 7pm, and fans have been invited to send photos, videos and written submissions to be shown during the talk.
What it launches is a pop-up radio station. Talking Heads Radio promises five decades of music from David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison and Tina Weymouth, taking in their various side projects alongside the band's own catalogue, with deep cuts, stories and commentary between the records. The conversation itself airs on the channel at noon on 1 October, the day it goes live.
How long it stays live depends on which report you read. Exclaim puts Talking Heads Radio on Channel 145 from 1 to 31 October. NME says it runs from 1 to 22 October on in-car satellite radios and until 31 October on the SiriusXM app. Those may both be describing the same thing from different angles, but they are printed as two different sets of dates.
One thing neither outlet leaves ambiguous. There is no performance, and there is no new music. Exclaim puts it in its headline, and it is the recurring caveat on every Talking Heads reunion of the past three years.
Those reunions have become a small tradition. The band first appeared together again at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2023, for the fortieth-anniversary remaster of the concert film Stop Making Sense, having split in 1991. Since then they have turned up together a handful of times, including an episode of Jeopardy in 2024 where they presented their own category. Asked at TIFF whether they might play together again, Weymouth said only that the group were savouring the moment.
Byrne has been consistent and unsentimental about why they will not. He told The Times last year that trying to recreate the feeling people had when they first heard the music in their early twenties is a fool's errand, and that he is enjoying what he is doing now. Frantz told NME in 2022 that he had raised it a couple of times, the last about twenty years ago, and that Byrne asked him never to bring it up again.
Our earlier note on this story recorded that no date or venue had been reported. Both are in the coverage: 28 September, at SiriusXM in New York. Byrne, meanwhile, has a busy autumn of his own, touring behind his book Sleeping Beauties. More from this end of the catalogue is on the rock hub.
The facts
- Talking Heads reunite on 28 September at SiriusXM's New York studios.
- Este Haim hosts a conversation recorded live in front of an audience at 7pm.
- It launches a pop-up channel, Talking Heads Radio, carrying the band's catalogue.
- The conversation airs on the channel at noon on 1 October.
- Exclaim puts the channel on Channel 145 from 1 to 31 October.
- NME says it runs to 22 October in cars and to 31 October on the app.
- No performance and no new music are part of it.
- The band first reunited at TIFF in 2023 for the Stop Making Sense remaster.
How this checks out
Developing
Reported by 2 independent outlets
A few outlets have it so far, short of the bar we set for confirmed.
Cited sources 2
Every outlet that reported this, linked to what it published. Equal credits, in alphabetical order.