Fear of Music (album) - Critical Reception

Critical Reception

The album was well received by reviewers. Jon Pareles, writing in Rolling Stone, was impressed with its "unswerving rhythms" and Byrne's lyrical evocations; he concluded, "Fear of Music is often deliberately, brilliantly disorienting. Like its black, corrugated packaging (which resembles a manhole cover), the album is foreboding, inescapably urban and obsessed with texture." John Rockwell of The New York Times suggested that the record was not a conventional rock release, while Stephanie Pleet of The Daily Collegian commented that it showed a positive progression in Talking Heads' musical style. Robert Christgau, writing in The Village Voice, praised the album's "gritty weirdness", but noted that "a little sweetening might help". Richard Cromelin of the Los Angeles Times was impressed with Byrne's "awesome vocal performance" and its nuances and called Fear of Music "a quantum leap" for the band. Tom Bentkowski of New York concluded, "But what makes the record so successful, perhaps, is a genuinely felt anti-elitism. Talking Heads was clever enough to make the intellectual infectious and even danceable."

Allmusic's William Ruhlmann claimed that Fear of Music is "an uneven, transitional album", but gave it a rating of four-and-a-half stars out of five by pointing out that it includes songs that match the quality of the band's best works. In the 1995 Spin Alternative Record Guide, Eric Weisbard gave the record a rating of nine out of ten and called it Talking Heads' most musically varied offering. In a 2003 review, Chris Smith of Stylus praised Byrne's personas and Eno's stylised production techniques. In The Rough Guide to Rock published the same year, Andy Smith concluded that the album is a strong candidate for the best LP of the 1970s because it is "bristling with hooks, riffs and killer lines".