'Here Lies Love,' David Byrne and Fatboy Slim

Two musical geniuses write a powerful musical about the life of Imelda Marcos.

On Here Lies Love, David Byrne is thinking beyond the shoes. The two-disc collaboration with Fatboy Slim is Byrne’s homage to Imelda Marcos, the notorious former First Lady of the Philippines — known for her rise from extreme poverty to extreme power, and remembered for her corruption and extravagance. (Supposedly, she had 3,000 pairs of shoes.) On this concept album, Byrne and Slim compose a drama — sketching scenes from Marcos’s childhood, courtship with Ferdinand Marcos, rocky marriage, political life and eventual exile from her home country. Some of the most powerful female singers living today (St. Vincent, Tori Amos, Florence Welch, Sharon Jones, Natalie Merchant), help pound out of youthful, discotheque beats of the irst disc. But Imelda’s emotions seem less genuine as she ages, and the biographical conceit feels played out by Disc Two. It’s hard to feel sympathy for a fallen

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Leah Sottile

Leah Sottile is a former Inlander music and culture editor and staff writer.