In a way, “Memories Can’t Wait” is almost like a Doors song, by Talking Heads. It plays that kind of portentous doominess, in the way it sounds and in the way David Byrne sings. It’s a little heavy metal-ish. I look at it, a little bit, like this band I like, this singer I like, dressed up in fake armor, trying to be scary. But at the same time, I must have been scared. For it to matter to me as much as it did, I must’ve been like, “Well I don’t know, under that fake armor, it’s really a monster. It’s really scary.”
MacArthur Award-winning novelist and essayist Jonathan Lethem on the song that puts the fear into Talking Heads’ Fear of Music.
