It should have been the Smiths really. A miserable teenager who preferred books to drinking Diamond White at the bus stop, I was an ideal candidate to have Morrissey as my patron saint.

But when I was about thirteen my dad changed the channel to BBC2 and there was �Stop Making Sense�. I�d been weaned on musical diet of �Top of the Pops� and the Top 40 so it was inevitable sudden exposure to the nervy New York rock of Talking Heads should have an effect. Here was music to dance to with lyrics to listen to and in the midst of it all was the High Priest of Geek; David Byrne, wearing glasses like mine during �Once in a Lifetime� and then a Big Suit and me watching mesmerised. Looking straight and conservative but acting like a maniac, dancing like an epileptic at the centre of that ecstatic, funk-filled music. The next day Mary Kenny, T.V. reviewer for the �Daily Mail� wrote about how much she hated it and at the weekend I bought my first �Talking Heads� album.

And musically speaking that was me taken care of for the next few years. There were occasional deviations � the Sugarcubes, Hue and Cry (ok, I was young) � but in the main Talking Heads was my soundtrack. But then I grew up. Talking Heads spoilt me a bit and I gave up trying to find bands whose lyrics and beats could match theirs and turned to electronic music. I discovered Steve Reich, Orbital, Aphex Twin, did without songs.

I still love Talking Heads just not with the obsessive devotion I once had. But there�s one song, their song about love, I feel I�ve grown into. Good songs stay with you but their meaning shifts and deepens. During the performance of �This Must Be the Place� in �Stop Making Sense� the tone softens. Byrne dances with a standard light, turning a piece of furniture into something magical and I thought it was beautiful when I heard back then but I know now I didn�t fully get it. I couldn�t have at that age. It�s a grown-up song that�s innocent and passionate and domestic and strange, all about finding someone you�re happy to settle down with. You�re amazed to find them and their amazed to find you and all you can do is sing about it.

I hadn�t listened to it properly for years until recently and when I did I sang along to it word perfect, loudly, a song about home as the person I found (or did they find me?) pottered about in the room next door and I was singing back to that teenager, letting her know things would be alright. Telling her that the songs will always be there and always stay the same and thankfully, wonderfully, we won�t.

© 2006 Laura Hird All rights reserved.