77: Don't Worry About The Government

I'm reminded of the Sand in the Vaseline compilation that was my real introduction to the Talking Heads. I used to listen to this song over and over, and laugh as the song pivoted on the "Loved ones, loved ones" line. I don't know how the describe the comedy of that moment - the key change amplifies the narrator's naivete, but leads into the "Don't worry 'bout me" section, where the keyboards hint at the ominous implications of total surrender to drooling bourgeois consumerism.

The references to "highways" seem particularly conspicuous to me. In telling the listener to "take the highway, park, and come up and see me," Byrne taps into postwar ideals of mobility (both physical and economic), of Eisenhower's interstates (with their ties to Cold War security) and the nuclear family moving out to the suburbs. The "laws made in Washington, D.C." strengthen the songs ties to the paternalistic, friendly government.

So, sure, the sense of expansive optimism, the song's grand swelling at the proclamation "My building has every convenience," suggests there's an irony, but I wonder how much of it is dependent on identity, on knowing who the Talking Heads are, the milieu from which they emerged, and their subsequent work. If you heard this song and didn't know who was singing it, would it register as a lump of banalities. This song doesn't have the contrast that, say, "The Big Country" does, where Byrne's attack on American placidity is overt and vicious. Nor is "Don't Worry About The Government" less effective than that song.

It's not entirely clear to me that "Don't Worry About The Government" is an attack either. In a sense it's descriptive, but the way in which it's descriptive of actual people, actual things, the way actual people think is suspect. The critique is aimed at some other identity, one that's obscure, possibly ephemeral.