"Burning Down the House" is a new wave and funk song. "This song started from a jam," says bassist Tina Weymouth in the liner notes of . "Chris Frantz|Chris had just been to see Parliament-Funkadelic in its full glory at Madison Square Garden, and he was really hyped. During the jam, he kept yelling 'Burn down the house!' which was a P-Funk audience chant, and David Byrne|David dug the line, changing it to the finished version, 'Burning down the house'." The initial lyrics were considerably different, however. In an interview on NPR's "All Things Considered" aired on December 2, 1984, David Byrne played excerpts of early worktapes showing how the song had evolved from an instrumental jam by Weymouth and Frantz. Once the whole band had reworked the groove into something resembling the final recording, Byrne began chanting and singing nonsense syllables over the music until he arrived at phrasing that fit with the rhythms—a technique influenced by former Talking Heads producer Brian Eno: "and then I just write words to fit that phrasing... I'd have loads and loads of phrases collected that I thought thematically had something to do with one another, and I'd pick from those." According to Byrne in the NPR interview, phrases that he tried but ultimately did not use in the song included "I have another body," "Pick it up by the handle," "You travel with a double," and "I'm still under construction." As for the title phrase in the chorus, one early attempt had him singing a different line, "What are we gonna do?", and at another point in the process, "instead of chanting 'Burning Down the House,' I was chanting 'Foam Rubber, USA.'"
Music video
The video, produced and directed by Byrne, alternates primarily between footage of the band performing the song in an empty ballroom, Byrne playing while facing a projection screen that displays a concert crowd or a wall of flames at different times, and images projected on the outside wall of a house. A young boy resembling Byrne takes his place from time to time; eventually, younger counterparts start moving the arms of all four band members to play the music. After the screen goes blank, both young and adult Byrne leave the stage, and the video ends with an extended close-up of Byrne's face projected on a highway at night. The house used in the video is located on Myrtle Street in Union, New Jersey. Max Illidge, vocalist of the band 40 Below Summer, and Rockets Redglare appear as the younger selves of Byrne and Jerry Harrison, respectively.
Chart performance
"Burning Down the House" became Talking Heads' highest-charting hit single in North America, becoming their only top ten single on the US BillboardHot 100, peaking at, as well as reaching the top ten in Canada. Despite this success, the song was not a hit outside of North America. In Australia it peaked at a modest, while in the UK, where Talking Heads would release 14 charting singles, it failed to make the charts at all.
In 1999, singer Tom Jones recorded a version of "Burning Down the House" with the group The Cardigans for his album of collaborations titled Reload. In common with the other tracks on the album, the recording was made with the collaborators' choice of producer and studios, in this case Tore Johansson and Tambourine Studios in Malmö, Sweden. The track was released as the lead single from Reloadin September 1999 and became a hit across Europe and Australia, reaching No. 1 in Iceland, No. 2 in Sweden, and the top ten in Australia, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Norway and the United Kingdom. The single was backed with Jones' live recordings of the EMF song "Unbelievable" and The Beatles' "Come Together", as well as remixes of "Burning Down the House" by Delakota, Pepe Deluxé and DJ Scissorkicks. As one of the major hits of Jones' later career, it appears on numerous compilations of Jones' work. It also features on The Cardigans' 2008 Best Of album.
