And She Was
| And She Was | ||||
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| File:And She Was.jpg | ||||
| Single by Talking Heads | ||||
| from the album Little Creatures | ||||
| Released | August 1985 (US) | |||
| Recorded | October 1984Template:Cn | |||
| Genre | Rock, new wave | |||
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| Songwriter(s) | David Byrne | |||
| Producer(s) | Talking Heads | |||
| Talking Heads singles chronology | ||||
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"And She Was" is a song by the American band Talking Heads, from their 1985 album Little Creatures. The song was written by David Byrne, who also provides the lead vocals. It reached No.54 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and No.1} on the British singles chart. The accompanying music video was directed by avant-garde filmmaker Jim Blashfield, who cites the style of Terry Gilliam as one of his major influences.
The song is musically notable for its unusual use of modulation. The overall key of the song is E major; however, the bridge to the chorus is in F major. The second bridge back to the verse is in the key of G major (Chords B minor to G major, "She was glad about it...")
Background
"I used to know a blissed-out hippie-chick in Baltimore," recalled Byrne in the liner notes of Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads. "She once told me that she used to do acid (the drug, not music) and lay down on the field by the Yoo-hoo chocolate soda factory. Flying out of her body, etc etc. It seemed like such a tacky kind of transcendence… but it was real! A new kind of religion being born out of heaps of rusted cars and fast food joints. And this girl was flying above it all, but in it too."
Drummer Chris Frantz said of the song, "It's a story about a woman who has the power to levitate above the ground and to check out all her neighbors from a kind of bird's eye view. And the guy who's writing the song is in love with her and he kinda wishes she would just be more normal and, like, come on back down to the ground [Laughs], but she doesn't. She goes floating over the backyard and past the buildings and the schools and stuff and is absolutely [upside-down] to him in every way."
Reception
Cash Box said that the song "displays David Byrne's discreet pop ingenuity and Talking Heads' inimitable rhythmic pump" and has "a strangely surrealistic lyric and a singalong chorus."
John Leland at Spin (magazine) praised the extended mix, saying, "Talking Heads overhaul the already brilliant "And She Was" and turn it into the vibrantly upbeat pop party record the B-52s have spent a lifetime trying to make."
In popular culture
The song was featured in the 1989 film Look Who's Talking, in the 2005 films Bewitched and Sky High, and the 2016 film Storks.