1985 · Behind the Songs
A cheerful song about the end of the world.
“Road to Nowhere” closes Little Creatures the way a closing hymn closes a service: everybody singing, everybody marching, and the subject is the end of everything. It’s a stomping, choir-backed singalong about oblivion that sounds like a party — the most Talking Heads trick imaginable.
The arrangement is deliberately simple: a marching beat, an accordion-like wheeze, massed backing vocals, and Byrne leading the parade with a grin. David Byrne directed the video himself with Stephen R. Johnson, full of the band performing inside boxes and wearing masks — surreal, homemade, and strangely moving.
The lyric treats the apocalypse as a road trip — we’re all going, so we might as well sing. Released as a single in 1985, it became a concert favorite and something like a secular hymn: the rare end-of-the-world song that leaves you smiling.
Fittingly, it became one of the band’s signature closers — including at their famous Stop Making Sense concert film, where it lands like a benediction.