David Byrne is set to marry his fiancée, Mala Gaonkar, after only very recently announcing their engagement.
The former Talking Heads frontman, 73, revealed his plans to marry the hedge fund founder, 55, on his Instagram Stories Monday.
“I’m getting married this week,” he wrote. “And made an almost entirely instrumental playlist while our guests eat an amazing and spicy dinner. 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,” the rock legend concluded.
He also shared a link to his Apple Music playlist with the instrumental songs for his big day. Some of the artists on the playlist include El Alfa, T Bone Burnett, Meridian Brothers, and Matthieu Saglio.
Byrne subtly announced his engagement during an interview with The Times last month while discussing the story behind his new song "Moisturizing Thing,” featured on his upcoming album, 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?’” he explained. “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.”
Byrne and Gaonkar have been dating since 2016, after meeting while co-writing an immersive show for the Stanford Arts Institute. Over the years, they’ve posed at several red carpet events together, including The Moth Ball 25th Anniversary Gala in 2022, the 2023 Oscars, and the red carpet for Dune: Part Two in 2024.
Before starting their relationship, they were both previously married. Byrne was married to Adelle Lutz from 1987 to 2004, with whom he shares one daughter, Malu, 36.
Meanwhile, Gaonkar was previously married to financier Oliver Haarmann, who was romantically linked to Reese Witherspoon in 2024. Gaonkar and Haarmann welcomed two children before their split.
Byrne revealed his wedding plans on the heels of his new album release, Who Is The Sky?, which comes out September 5. Speaking to Rolling Stone last month, he shared how the album's title originated from a misheard phrase.
“Somebody was sending me a text using voice-to-text, and the algorithm got it a little bit wrong. And what came up on my phone was ‘Who is the sky?’ And I thought, ‘That’s a beautiful phrase.’ I know what they were really saying — it’s pretty easy to tell, in English anyway. But I thought, ‘I’m going to put that on the list of album titles,’” he explained.
“And I realized that it fit in other ways. There’s a lot of songs where I’m asking, ‘Who am I? Who is this? What is that about? Why do we do this?’” Byrne added. “I also had this thought that the image on the record cover would be me partly hidden. So: ‘Who is this guy?’”
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