"...Or if coproducer Brian Eno, once Bryan Ferry’s colleague in Roxy Music, hadn’t crammed so much humor and energy into each song. The cerebral, brittle sound of Talking Heads: 77 has been fleshed out with supple synthesizer fills, and Chris Frantz’ drums and the synthesized percussion leap boldly out of the mix. Almost every cut has a percussive gimmick — handclaps, clattering rim shots, a heavily echoed backbeat — that rivets the attention, punctuating the melody or hammering home the words.

These arrangements bustle without sounding cluttered. Whenever the agitated jangle of guitars starts to nag, it slips into something mellifluous. Thus “The Girls Want to Be with the Girls” shuttles back and forth between the staccato attack of a mid-Sixties garage band and the playful lilt of a nursery rhyme. “Stay Hungry” manages to meld James Brown, the early Beatles (“Things We Said Today”) and a “progressive”-rock synthesizer. The eclecticism of More Songs about Buildings and Food — its witty distillations of disco and reggae rhythms, its reconciliation of “art” and punk rock — is masterful, The music represents a triumph over diversity, while the words spell out defeat by disparities between mind and body, head and heart.

This, presumably, is why Talking Heads make music — and superb music at that. Because talk is cheap."

- Ken Emerson, Rolling Stone