Music icon David Byrne is set to make you feel better, with the former Talking Heads frontman launching his new online magazine, Reasons To Be Cheerful.
Back in early 2018, David Byrne announced that he was aiming to help the world feel much better than they had been. Inspired by the Ian Dury & The Blockheads song of the same name, Byrne kicked off a new project titled ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful’ with a lecture at The New School university in New York.
Serving as something of a mixture between an album launch for 2018’s American Utopia and a TED Talk, Byrne used the opportunity to give the world a shining beacon of hope in the otherwise dismal cycle of bad news.
Now, David Byrne has taken his new project online, with Rolling Stone noting he has launched his Reasons To Be Cheerful website over the weekend.
Check out the introductory video to Reasons To Be Cheerful:
Featuring articles that touch upon a number of topics, Byrne notes that his new venture is an “online editorial project that is tonic for tumultuous times.”
“It often seems as if the world is going straight to Hell,” he shared in an accompanying statement.
“I wake up in the morning, I look at the paper, and I say to myself, ‘Oh no!’ Often I’m depressed for half the day. I imagine some of you feel the same.”
“Recently, I realized this isn’t helping. Nothing changes when you’re numb. So, as a kind of remedy, and possibly as a kind of therapy, I started collecting good news.
“Not schmaltzy, feel-good news, but stuff that reminded me, ‘Hey, there’s positive stuff going on! People are solving problems and it’s making a difference!’ I began telling others about what I’d found.”
To launch Reasons To Be Cheerful, David Byrne also shared a video describing the project, describing it as “part magazine, part therapy session, part blueprint for a better world”, and a place to find “smart, proven, replicable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.”
“These aren’t stories about how we wish things were, this is the story of how they are, right now,” he adds. “I feel better already.”
Check out ‘Everybody’s Coming To My House’ by David Byrne:
