Drawing from a deep well, the opening title song is a 21-year-old graduate's manifesto. Surpassingly well-written lyrics celebrate an artist's love of city life, independence, and the promise of youth: "The rivers in the distance / Must be leading somewhere," and "Stay" caused a WFNX DJ to exclaim after playing it in 1993, "So lovely, but I don't understand it!" 1984

Something inspired Talking Heads to endlessly rehearse these songs, combining lyrics so abstract ("Making thirty-five/ Trying to do my best/ Lock the door/ We kill the beast/ Kill it,") with funk so catchy, that the resulting album is a superbly polished mirror reflecting nothing yet everything. 1983

"We'll get by, I suppose," the urbane, diffident narrator of this extraordinary album observes on "Fantastic Voyage," the song that begins both a whirlwind world tour (Africa, Cyprus, Kyoto, Russia, and Turkey) and a flip book of odd lyrics made mesmerizing by catchy musical hooks. Contributing guitarist Adrian Belew, commenting years later on this album's growing popularity and critical stature, called it "Bowie's greatest gift to the world." 1979