David Byrne is getting married – for the second time - this week and to celebrate he has shared a playlist that will accompany his nuptials.
He’s tying the knot with financier Mala Gaonkar, and just a few days before the ceremony took to Instagram Stories with a list of some 42 tracks – all of them instrumental – which will be played at his wedding dinner.
“I’m getting married this week and made an almost entirely instrumental playlist while our guests eat an amazing and spicy dinner,” Byrne told his fans, sharing a link to an Apple Music playlist.
“My sense is that words and lyrics can be distracting – the ear goes to them, especially if it’s a song one knows. So, I opted for buoyant instrumentals that will create a hopeful and joyous atmosphere… and that folks can also ignore at the same time.”
Taylor Swift: engagedDavid Byrne: hold my bike pic.twitter.com/rIh1PDFFJISeptember 1, 2025
It’s a fairly diverse array of tunes, ranging from Latin artists such as Son Rompe Pera and El Alfa to Americana doyen T Bone Burnett to the New York street poet Moondog. There’s also space there for an instrumental version of Post Malone’s Wow and his old mucker Brian Eno with a track called An Ending (Ascent).
Byrne only announced his engagement a few weeks ago, during an interview with The Times in which he discussed Moisturising Things, a track from his first album in seven years, Who Is The Sky. “My fiancée will sometimes come at me with greasy hands, ready to smear my face. “And at one point I thought, ‘What if I wake up and really looked younger?’ But there’s a message, too. About how people judge us by the way we look. You learn a lesson you didn’t expect at the start.”
It’s shaping up to be a big week for the 73-year-old ex-Talking Head as Who Is The Sky comes out this Friday.
In the same Times interview, Byrne killed off any remaining hopes fans might have had for a Talking Heads reunion, describing the idea as “a fool’s errand”.
