David Byrne: “I regret not hiring and collaborating with women for this album”

david-byrne

David Byrne‘s new album American Utopia comes out this week (3/9) and ahead of the release, Byrne dedicated this month’s playlist to music by his collaborators for the album. He faced some backlash in the replies to his tweet about the lack of women on the album and playlist, and Byrne has now responded to that criticism:

I recently posted a piece and a playlist about the various folks who collaborated on my new album. There have been some responses and some of them have pointed out the lack of women among this group. I’d like to thank those of you who wrote for calling attention to this-this matters a lot to me.

The image in the post clearly reveals this problem in a way that mere words do not. This lack of representation is something that is problematic and wide spread in our industry. I regret not hiring and collaborating with women for this album-it’s ridiculous, it’s not who I am and it certainly doesn’t match how I’ve worked in the past. It doesn’t represent my current live show, which has a slew of diverse creators and collaborators, making this even more negligent on my part.

I am happy that we live in a time that this conversation is happening. It’s hard to realize that no matter how much effort you spend nudging the world in what you hope is the right direction, sometimes you are part of the problem. I never thought of myself as being “one of those guys,” but I guess to some extent I am. Your responses serve as a corrective. Thank you.

DB
Buffalo, NY

Byrne began his tour in NJ over the weekend.

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