Home is where I want to be

Talking Heads spent years being brilliant and guarded, and then, on the last track of Speaking in Tongues, they let it drop. For “This Must Be the Place” the band swapped instruments — Tina Weymouth to guitar, Jerry Harrison to a synthesizer bassline — and looped one simple figure for the whole song, which is why the subtitle says “Naive Melody”. Nobody is showing off, and that turns out to be the point.

David Byrne wanted to write a love song without any of the genre’s clichés, and got there by way of non sequiturs: “Home is where I want to be, pick me up and turn me round.” Love as pleasant disorientation. In Stop Making Sense he sings it to a floor lamp, dancing with it like a partner — the most guileless moment in a film full of choreography, from a man who built a career on seeming alien.

Play it at the end of something: a party, a move, a long year.