Burning Down the House

Released in July 1983 as the first single from Speaking in Tongues, it reached 9 on the Hot 100 and the top ten in Canada, but did not chart in the UK and reached only 94 in Australia. Weymouth said it started from a jam, after Frantz had just seen Parliament-Funkadelic at Madison Square Garden and kept yelling Burn down the house, a P-Funk audience chant. Byrne changed it to Burning down the house and began lyrics in 1982. He sang nonsense syllables until he had phrasing that fit the rhythm, a method he took from Eno, and he chose aphorisms and non sequiturs with an emotional connection rather than a story. Worktape phrases that he dropped included "I have another body" and "Foam Rubber, USA".

Byrne played guitars, bass, keyboards and percussion, Harrison keyboards, Weymouth synth bass and Frantz drums and synthesizer, with Wally Badarou on synthesizers and Steve Scales on percussion. Pitchfork's Stacey Anderson noted that the song starts with a literal scream from Byrne and has no clear markers between verse and chorus, a stampede to the howled refrain. Byrne produced and directed the video, in which the band plays in an empty ballroom and a house on Myrtle Street in Union Township, New Jersey appears. The video was played heavily on MTV.

Live and covers

An extended live version is a highlight of Stop Making Sense and runs 4:10 on the soundtrack. Tom Jones recorded it with the Cardigans in 1999 and it reached 1 in Iceland, 2 in Sweden and the top ten in the UK. Paramore released a cover on 31 January 2024 as the lead single of the Stop Making Sense tribute, and Byrne praised it. They issued it on a Record Store Day twelve-inch with Byrne's cover of their song Hard Times. The Used, Bonnie Raitt and John Legend have also performed it, and Olivia Rodrigo sang it with Byrne at Governors Ball in 2025.