The Wind That Blows the Clouds Away

I happened to be playing the Talking Heads classic "Don't Worry About the Government" on guitar the other day, as you do, and noticed a curious and revealing thing about its chord progression: It starts in C, ratchets up to a chorus in D, then has a sort of post-chorus section in E. Though it ultimately concludes on a D chord, the melody saves its high note, an A, for its conclusion: "Don't you worry about me." You can see it play out here:

Whereas the effect of modulations in a lot of classic pop and country, from Stevie Wonder to George Jones, is a kind of aural wipe transition—and now this!—the whole-step upward movement in "Don't Worry" has the unmistakable sound of willful, self-cranking optimism, like someone practicing their smile in front of a mirror or restraightening their posture to an ever-unattainable ideal. It is Norman Vincent Peale in song form, and it makes an ideal support for the chirpy ventriloquism of the lyrics, with their naïf burbling about planned development, civil service, and the rituals of work. One of David Byrne's most seamlessly double-edged performances, it is both a movingly sincere celebration of company-man conformity (he grew up in the Maryland suburbs, around a lot of government workers) and a blistering parody of it—and I'd argue that the irony is conveyed in the music, from the teletype-like sixteenth-note guitar figure that opens the tune (and returns in the "loved ones" section) to the cheesy keyboard fills and mild reggae groove.

But above all what gives us a sense that the song's pasted-on all-American grin is at least as performative as it is genuine is the synthetic ascent of keys built into its form—little flips of a nob that signal the narrator's effortful desperation, as if he's afraid we won't get it unless he continually kicks it up a notch. The song ends on a final bleated, elongated "me!," an A over a D chord. Is this the song's home key? It feels more like our hero is standing on a precipice—maybe even the roof of the building he is so happy to tell us about—and things could go either way for him. Or rather, there's nowhere to go but up.