Olivia Rodrigo surprised the crowd during her performance at New York’s Governors Ball in June when she brought out a special guest: Rock & Roll Hall of Famer David Byrne of the band Talking Heads. Now, Byrne tells Rolling Stone how that moment came together.
“I saw her show at Madison Square Garden months before. She’s a great performer, and she was having a really good time, you could tell,” Byrne says of Olivia, who brought her GUTS tour to New York City in April 2024.
“I got introduced to her afterwards, and she seemed like a real person — someone who, growing up in the world that she did, survived it really well,” Byrne adds. “So then, out of nowhere, comes this invitation: ‘Hey, would you like to join me at Governors Ball?’ My reaction was, ‘Yeah. And shall we figure out some choreography together?’”
Olivia and Byrne performed the Talking Heads’ classic “Burning Down the House” together, with Byrne wearing red overalls to match Liv’s red two-piece set. They also did, in fact, perform some joint choreography, which involved running, jumping and doing knee bends.
Byrne is also much admired by other younger artists, including Lorde and Paramore‘s Hayley Williams, both of whom recorded Talking Heads songs for a tribute project last year. He suggests that the reason why may be that he’s “gotten myself into a place where I have a certain amount of freedom to try things out and do different things, which is rare in the music world.”
And that admiration runs both ways. He tells Rolling Stone, “I saw Charli XCX, and it was just her onstage, no band, no dancers, nothing else. I thought, ‘Whoa, this is really brave.’ Part of me was also going, ‘Wow, this is really economical, too.’”
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