No Compassion

"No Compassion" is the closing track on the first side of Talking Heads' debut album, Talking Heads: 77, released in September 1977. It's an early and unusually blunt example of David Byrne's lyrical worldview, with a confrontational attitude toward social conventions and emotional expectations.

"No Compassion" is Byrne's critique of a certain kind of modern complaint culture, people who endlessly rehearse their anxieties without ever doing anything about them. Byrne finds this baffling. Problems are for solving, not sharing. Hence the brush-off: Go talk to your analyst Isn't that what they're paid for? Emotional labor, the song suggests, should be outsourced to professionals, preferably ones with clipboards.

The song came out of a real-life relationship. "David was dating a girl, a really terrific girl- a wonderful artist, so smart," bassist Tina Weymouth told Uncut magazine. "He got so many ideas from her. But at one point, he just got cruel. He wrote this song, which is so negative." Yet, she added, it rang true. Byrne's lyrics, usually assembled in a cut-and-paste, William Burroughs–style collage of overheard phrases and newspaper snippets, here come closer than usual to autobiography, even if filtered through his characteristic emotional detachment.