Bust Out the Big Suit: Talking Heads’ ‘Stop Making Sense’ Returning to Theaters in 2023

Daniel Kreps
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stopmakingsense - Credit: A24
stopmakingsense - Credit: A24

Talking Heads’ classic 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense — Number Four on Rolling Stone’s List of the Best Music Documentaries — will return to theaters later this year with a new 4K restoration courtesy of A24.

To celebrate the film’s big-screen revival, David Byrne participated in a clever promo where the singer drops by a neighborhood dry cleaner to reclaim his trademark oversized suit seen in the Jonathan Demme-directed film. Byrne then bikes the suit home, puts it back on, and tries his best to recapture his “Girlfriend Is Better” dance moves nearly 40 years later.

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“There was a band. There was a concert,” the Talking Heads said in a statement. “This must be the movie!” No release date has yet been announced.

In addition to the film’s restoration and rerelease, Stop Making Sense’s 1984 soundtrack will be reissued in unabridged, 2-LP form for the first time on August 18.

The original single-disc soundtrack, released in 1984, only featured nine highlights from the documentary, while a 1999 CD reissue featured all 16 of the songs seen in the film. Along with those 16 songs, the 40th-anniversary vinyl edition tacks on two more performances — “Cities” and “Big Business”/”I Zimbra” — that were otherwise only currently available as bonus features on the preexisting Stop Making Sense DVDs.

The new edition, available to preorder now, also features a 28-page booklet complete with a reproduction of the original booklet from the 1984 limited edition pressing, additional pages with never-before-seen photos, and new notes on the film written by all four band members: Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Jerry Harrison, and Chris Frantz.

Stop Making Sense 40th Anniversary Edition Track List

1.    Psycho Killer 
2.    Heaven 
3.    Thank You for Sending Me an Angel 
4.    Found a Job 
5.    Slippery People 
6.    Cities * 
7.    Burning Down the House 
8.    Life During Wartime 
9.    Making Flippy Floppy 
10.    Swamp 
11.    What a Day That Was 
12.    This Must Be the Place (Naïve Melody) 
13.    Once in a Lifetime 
14.    Big Business/I Zimbra * 
15.    Genius of Love 
16.    Girlfriend is Better 
17.    Take Me to the River 
18.    Crosseyed and Painless

*previously unreleased

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