Songfacts®:

• Talking Heads lead singer David Bryne often infuses his lyrics with a touch of paranoia. In this song, he points out that even air can hurt us, and thus it's yet another thing to worry about. "A song about the air not being your friend was one of David's interesting lyrical points of view," the band's drummer Chris Frantz wrote in his memoir Remain In Love. "He took something everyone needs to survive and made it into an enemy."
• The music is appropriately airy on this track, with breathy electronic sounds that reflect the influence of Brian Eno, who produced the Fear Of Music album. David Byrne cites the German composer Kurt Weill as an influence on the song, stating in a documentary on The South Bank show: "One of my ambitions was to write those kind of melodies that sound very haunting. I don't think I was entirely successful, but I came a little bit close."
• The female vocals on the track are Talking Heads bass player Tina Weymouth and her sisters, Laura and Lani, who were credited as "The Sweetbreaths." This threesome had a big role in the 1981 debut album by the Tom Tom Club, which was a collective put together by Weymouth and her husband, Talking Heads drummer Chris Frantz.
• This is one of seven songs with one-word titles on Fear Of Music. The album was recorded in Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth's New York City loft where the band often rehearsed. They parked a mobile recording unit outside to record the tracks as they played from the loft.