X-Press 2 Spin “Lazy” feat. David Byrne
Listen to this track by British deep house trio X-Press 2 and Talking Heads affiliated singer and songwriter David Byrne. It’s “Lazy”, a 2002 hit single that also appeared on the crew’s debut album Musikizum released that same year. The song certainly had legs for yet another version that Byrne included on his 2004 album Grown Backwards as a bonus track. On that release, Byrne presents the song in an orchestral-meets-art-rock arrangement to contrast the deep house beats of the original. The song would appear in yet another version years later in his American Utopia stage show as well.
For a pure dance tune that was initially made for the clubs, “Lazy” did very well as a pop single in the UK charts. The radio edit version of “Lazy” reached number two on the singles charts. It was only blocked from the number one slot by one-time Pop Idol singer Gareth Gates’ version of “Unchained Melody”. Talk about stylistic contrast. Of course, this song has plenty of that on its own. Its appeal was enough to make it a culturally resonant release which helped it to win an Ivor Novello award. This is only one layer of its significant crossover success.
Critics at the time noted “Lazy” for its supreme cheeriness and life-affirming energy, which is hard to deny even this many years later. There’s also a kind of deadpan humour found in this song. That’s evident in part because of how well it undercuts expectations with lyrics that are all about supreme indolence while backed by an incandescently energetic vibe that demands movement from anyone who hears it. This could be why Byrne decided to reinterpret it more than once; to see how that contrast translates into other arrangements while still retaining its central irony. Of course the reason could also be that it’s one of the strongest melodies he’s ever written in a career characterized by stylistic explorations outside of his art rock wheelhouse.
David Byrne on stage in 2013 during his shows with St. Vincent. image:
Andrea SartoratiBy the late Nineties, Byrne further developed his fascination with modern dance music. His interest led to collaborations with Morcheeba and later with Thievery Corporation. When it came to X-Press 2, Byrne was initially interested in having them as a backing band, a proposal at which they balked. As much as all three members of X-Press 2 were Byrne fans, they had to tell him that they were just three DJs with not much value to him as traditional sidemen. The aforementioned Morcheeba got the job instead. Yet the shared interest in music designed to get people moving and in all music that comes out of disparate and diverse cultures sharing space together made their subsequent collaboration on this song to be a natural one.
At their invitation when cutting music for their debut, Byrne wrote the lyrics and recorded his vocals in New York and emailed them to Ashley Beedle, Darren House (aka DJ Diesel) and Darren Rock (aka DJ Rocky) of X-Press 2 in London. Once the trio cut the finished track against Byrne’s voice, the results were a combination of a strong radio-friendly melody matched with effervescent and undeniable dance energy. These elements are bound together into a familiar pop structure that brought out the strengths of both parties; X-Press 2’s cutting edge beats, and David Byrne’s unmistakable voice infused with jittery post-punk charm.
It was clear that the combination had massive pop potential as a radio single. But the tune proved itself on the dance floor first. When they spun the track at London dance club Fabric in the summer of 2001 they knew they had something.
DJ Rocky tells the story:
“We played it at midnight when we started, and it went down okay,” Rocky recalls. “We played it again around 3am and people were like, ‘Oh, there’s that song again!’ Then we played it at 6am, and it was mental. Everyone was singing along. It went off!”
~ “How X-Press 2 and David Byrne’s ‘Lazy’ became the timeless house ode to doing nothing” (June 2022). Read the whole article.
The impact provided a way for pop radio fans to enter into the world of club music with less friction than before. It opened the ears of labels and radio executives, too. For a brief instant, the idea of placing music into distinct stylistic baskets didn’t seem quite so applicable. At the same time, the music is true to the artistic home bases of the participants. X-Press 2 hook into their European techno and disco-inspired grooves as they’d always done. And as for Byrne, the lyrics reflect common themes found in even his earliest songs in Talking Heads.
Besides as an exercise in irony, “Lazy” is about inner conflict that comes about by living in the modern world. Countless songs of Byrne’s touch on this, including hints as to his struggles in feeling like an outsider in mainstream society and a stranger to its social conditions and norms. As joyous as the music around it is, “Lazy” is a song about solitude, repression, emotional paralysis, and doubt. It’s a cry for connection.
Imagine there’s a girlfriend
Imagine there’s a job
Imagine there’s an answer
Imagine there’s a God
Imagine I’m a Devil
Imagine I’m a Saint
Lazy money
Lazy sexy
Lazy outta space!
No tears are fallin’ from my eyes
I’m keepin’ all the pain inside
Now don’t you wanna live with me?
I’m lazy as a man can be!
~ “Lazy” by X-Press 2 and David Byrne
These is are themes Byrne has examined since he wrote “Psycho Killer” and “No Compassion” and so many others; that living in the modern world can alienate you, and that even when you’re at a crowded club of heaving bodies, you can still feel very much alone. As ubiquitous services ushered forth by technology bring everything to our doors at a tap of a touchscreen in our own era these many years later, feelings of disconnection, isolation, and despondency have only deepened.
It seems that technology is incapable of solving the problem of human loneliness. In some ways, it’s only exacerbated it. But in the meantime, there are worse things one can do than get up and dance, even if sometimes we feel too lazy – or too sad – to do it.
X-Press 2 are an active outfit today as a duo. Ashley Beedle left them amicably in 2009. For his part, David Byrne has continued to be a musically curious artist, collaborating with many artists in the dance field and without. Find him at davidbyrne.com
As mentioned, he recorded his own version of “Lazy” a few years after the original that takes the song into a cinematic and string-laden musical space. You can listen to that right here. You can also see David Byrne perform the song during his American Utopia show, right here.
Enjoy!
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