David Byrne’s “Glass, concrete and stone”
Building(s) in lyrics
Through 2026, It’s Material is sharing examples of building(s) in lyrics, a kind of “acupuncture of meaning” to explore the back-and-forth connection between building/s and our lives.
This week, the title lyrics from David Byrne’s song “Glass, concrete and stone”, from the album Grown Backwards.
“Gonna be on my way, try to pretend, it’s not only
Glass and concrete and stone
That it’s just a house, not a home.”
Take a listen, close your eyes, and enjoy the drums and the cello as well as the words.
There’s the often unrecognized emotional dimension of building materials like glass, concrete, and stone, which create buildings, which in turn become homes, filling up with experiences and memories, creating attachment.
There’s also the fact that turning a raw material into a building material is perhaps one of humans’ oldest activities, along with language.
And there’s the fact that building materials are tied into intricate economic, social and environmental dimensions. During a recent course I taught on human rights and the built environment, one of the faculty began her presentation by asking “how often do you enter a building, and wonder who produced the materials it is made from?”
The materials can often be traced back through long and complex supply chains, involving workers in extraction, production and transportation. Any thinking about the ethics, environmental impacts and possibilities for transformation in the built environment has to take its materials into account. Check out earlier It’s Material stories on building materials below.
And…a shout-out to my eldest son for recommending this week’s building-related lyrics. He got into Talking Heads, and then in turn its former lead singer David Byrne, after we watched the movie of the live performance of their Stop Making Sense album. (Which, speaking of buildings, my husband and I had first seen in the tiny brick-built converted firehouse “Cinema Village” in NYC’s West Village for his birthday - we were the only ones in the audience).
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A few more takes on building materials…
