How a Yoo-Hoo Factory Played Into a Talking Heads Classic From 1985

Talking Heads earned a reputation as a band that was constantly pushing boundaries with their music. Their experimental tendencies made them difficult to categorize and an uneasy fit for the mainstream pop world.

Even when they adjusted their approach to a more radio-friendly pitch, they still found ways to subvert the typical pop song. “And She Was”, a bouncy, hooky track that the band released in 1985, subtly drew an extremely quirky character sketch.

Heads Up

The story goes that when Talking Heads was working with Brian Eno on their early albums, the producer would immediately toss out any piece of music that sounded suspiciously like a hit. This uncompromising approach allowed the band to stake their claim to relatively untrodden musical ground in the late 70s and early 80s.

Little by little, the public started to come around to listen to what the critics had been raving about the band. In 1983, Talking Heads found themselves in the pop Top 10 with the chaotic funk of “Burning Down The House”. A year later, their concert film Stop Making Sense extended their level of exposure even more.

Perhaps sensing that the time was right to strike for the mainstream, the band changed their approach for the 1985 LP Little Creatures. Instead of working from the ground up in the studio on songs, lead singer David Byrne came to the sessions with completed demos of prospective tracks. One of those songs was “And She Was”.

A Trippy Character

In the liner notes to Talking Heads’ greatest hits album Once In A Lifetime: The Best Of The Talking Heads, Byrne explained his inspiration for “And She Was”:

“I used to know a blissed-out hippie-chick in Baltimore. 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.”

In the past, the band might have adorned such a tale with knotty music full of complex textures and polyrhythms. Instead, “And She Was” bounces along happily on Tina Weymouth’s Motown-style bassline. Rock guitars enter the picture at the song’s end as Byrne wildly vamps on the microphone.

“And She Was” came equipped with a groundbreaking video as well upon its release as the third single from Little Creatures. Although it only made it to No. 54 on the pop charts, it now stands as one of the group’s most often-played songs.

Behind the Lyrics for “And She Was”

The continuous use of the title phrase in the lyrics makes the various descriptions of the girl melt into one another, as if time were fluent in her world. “And she could hear the highway breathing,” Byrne sings, letting us know that this girl is operating on another wavelength than the normal routine.

Soon, she’s escalating: “The world was moving, she was/Floatin’ above it and she was.” Her actions continually skew toward personal freedom: “And she was drifting through the backyard/And she was taking off her dress.” “She had a pleasant elevation,” Byrne notes.

By song’s end, she’s “joining the world of missing persons.” But thanks to Byrne’s perky vocals and the effervescent music, you never feel worried or sad about the heroine of “And She Was”. She’s long gone, and just fine with that.

(Photo by Linda D. Robbins/Getty Images)

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