Naked

After two albums of American pop forms, the band recorded Naked in Paris with producer Steve Lillywhite and guests including Johnny Marr and Kirsty MacColl. The liner notes describe the choice as partly a reaction to the isolationist foreign policy of the Reagan administration. About 40 improvised tracks were recorded before leaving for France. In Paris the musicians played all day and one take was chosen each evening, with lyrics and melodies left until the band returned to New York. Frantz said that Paris was a wonderful place to work. Byrne told Record Mirror in 1988 that the songs were about people stripped of their pretensions, which led to a chimpanzee on the cover.

The album reached 19 on the Billboard 200 and 3 in the UK, and went gold from both the RIAA and the BPI. In Rolling Stone, Anthony DeCurtis heard a return to the open-ended, groove-oriented style of Remain in Light, while AllMusic's Michael Hastings found it closest in spirit to that record, arguably too close. It placed 24th in the 1988 Pazz and Jop poll. The band went on hiatus afterwards, and Byrne announced in December 1991 that it had dissolved.