More Songs About Buildings and Food

The front cover of the album, conceived by Byrne and executed by artist Jimmy De Sana, is a photomosaic of the band comprising 529 close-up Polaroid photographs.[6] The rear cover of the album shows "Portrait U.S.A.", a satellite image of the United States, created in 1976 by the General Electric Co.. It was produced by their Beltsville Photo Engineering Lab with the assistance of the National Geographic Society and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration".[7]

Concerning the album's title, bassist Tina Weymouth was quoted in a 1979 interview with Creem:

When we were making this album I remembered this stupid discussion we had about titles for the last album," Tina smirked. "At that time I said, 'What are we gonna call an album that's just about buildings and food?' And Chris said, 'You call it more songs about buildings and food.'[8]

XTC frontman Andy Partridge later claimed, however, that he gave the title to Byrne.[9]

More Songs About Buildings and Food was released on July 21, 1978.[6] It peaked at number 29 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart. The album's sole single, a cover of the Al Green hit "Take Me to the River", peaked at number 26 on the pop singles chart in 1979. The single pushed the album to gold record status.[10]

Warner Music Group re-released and remastered the album in 2005, on its Warner Bros., Sire and Rhino Records labels in DualDisc format, with four bonus tracks on the CD side—"Stay Hungry" (1977 version), alternate versions of "I'm Not in Love" and "The Big Country", and the 'Country Angel' version of "Thank You for Sending Me an Angel". The DVD-Audio side includes both stereo and 5.1 surround high resolution (96 kHz/24bit) mixes, as well as a Dolby Digital version and videos of the band performing "Found a Job" and "Warning Sign". In Europe, it was released as a CD+DVDA two-disc set rather than a single DualDisc. The reissue was produced by Andy Zax with Talking Heads.

Professional ratings

Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic	[11]
Chicago Tribune	[12]
Christgau's Record Guide	A[13]
The Guardian	[14]
The Irish Times	[15]
Mojo	[16]
Pitchfork	8.8/10[17]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide	[18]
Spin Alternative Record Guide	9/10[19]
Uncut	[20]

Reviewing the album for Rolling Stone magazine, Ken Emerson said:

Love and work, of course, is what Freud said all of us need, but on More Songs About Buildings and Food, Byrne appears able to imagine the proper equilibrium only in "Found a Job," wherein a bickering couple's relationship improves while collaborating on television scripts. He sings about this improvement with considerable sarcasm, though, and elsewhere on the LP, love and logic are at loggerheads.[21]

Writing for Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981), critic Robert Christgau said:

Here the Heads become a quintet in an ideal producer-artist collaboration—Eno contributes/interferes just enough. Not only does his synthesized lyricism provide flow and continuity, it also makes the passive, unpretentious technological mysticism he shares with the band real in the aural world. In fact, there is so much beautiful music (and so much funky music) on this album that I'll take no more complaints about David Byrne's voice. Every one of these eleven songs is a positive pleasure, and on every one the tension between Byrne's compulsive flights and the sinuous rock bottom of the music is the focus.[13]

More Songs About Buildings and Food was ranked at number four among the top "Albums of the Year" for 1978 by NME, with "Take Me to the River" ranked at number 16 among the year's top tracks.[22] In 2003, the album was ranked number 382 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time,[23] and 384 in 2012.[24] It was ranked number 57 on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest albums of 1967–1987.

It was ranked the 45th best album of the 1970s by Pitchfork in 2006. Reviewing the album for Pitchfork, Nick Sylvester said:

More Songs About Buildings and Food transformed the Talking Heads from a quirky CBGB spectacle to a quirky near-unanimously regarded "it" band. New producer Brian Eno can take his due credit for the album's success, smartly tightening up the rhythm section's energy for more dance-oriented beats and a more prominent role in general, though without taking the limelight off head Head David Byrne's nervous sputters. Byrne's own songwriting was, as the album titled suggested, in the same quotidian vein as '77, though perhaps Buildings and Food has slightly more vitriol, especially on album closer, "The Big Country", Byrne's indictment of the South. More Songs About Buildings and Food probably could have survived as a cult album by a cult band, but what really opened up the Talking Heads for a national audience was the band's slinky cover of Al Green's famous "Take Me to the River", which put them on the top 30 singles charts for the first time.[25]

All tracks are written by David Byrne, except where noted.

Note

• ^[a] – Mixed at Media Sound Recording Studios by Brian Eno and Ed Stasium

Harrison and Byrne (right) with Talking Heads in August 1978 at Jay's Longhorn Bar, Minneapolis, Minnesota

Talking Heads

• David Byrne – lead vocals, guitars, synthesized percussion
• Chris Frantz – drums, percussion
• Jerry Harrison – piano, organ, synthesizer, guitar, backing vocals
• Tina Weymouth – bass guitar

Additional musicians

• Brian Eno – synthesizers, piano, guitar, percussion, backing vocals
• Tina and the Typing Pool – backing vocals on "The Good Thing"

Production

• Benji Armbrister – assistant engineer
• Rhett Davies – engineer, mixing
• Joe Gastwirt – mastering
• Ed Stasium – mixing on "Found a Job"