More Songs About Buildings and Food

On the spring 1977 European tour with the Ramones, Weymouth played James Brown tapes on the bus, which annoyed Johnny Ramone. At the end of the tour Eno caught a small London show, invited the band to lunch, and played them Fela Kuti's Afrodisiac. By the following spring the band had dropped its original production team and recorded the album with Eno in the Bahamas, at Compass Point Studios, which began the band's relationship with that studio. Pitchfork's Jill Mapes heard the music moving toward groove, with slowed tempos, built-up layers and Eno's studio-as-instrument effects.

The front cover, conceived by Byrne and executed by Jimmy De Sana, is a mosaic of 529 close-up Polaroids of the band. The back cover shows Portrait U.S.A., a NASA and General Electric satellite mosaic. Weymouth told Creem in 1979 that Frantz suggested the title during a discussion about names for the previous album, while Andy Partridge of XTC later claimed he gave it to Byrne. The record reached 29 on the Billboard pop albums chart and 21 in the UK, and its one single, Take Me to the River, went to 26 in 1979 and made the album gold. NME ranked it fourth among albums of 1978, and Pitchfork put it 45th among the best albums of the 1970s in 2006. Robert Christgau wrote that every one of its eleven songs was a positive pleasure. A 2005 reissue added four bonus tracks and a three-CD deluxe edition followed on 25 July 2025.