David Byrne has written a song for Alex Gibney’s forthcoming feature-length documentary about Elon Musk, using lyrics entirely comprised of quotes from the world’s first trillionaire.
The track is called Let Me Sell You A Dream and has been co-written by the film’s composer Daniel Pemberton. The lyrics, it seems, were easy for the ex-Talking Head to source. “I asked for good quotes from the Martian, and found more of them online,” Byrne told Variety in an interview. “I’m sure he loves dropping these wild statements, and those became the lyrics. All his own words. No editorializing. Straight from the man’s mouth to mine.”
Gibney sounds elated to have bagged Byrne for the soundtrack. “I was thrilled when David agreed to write (with our composer Daniel Pemberton) and perform the final song in the film,” he said. “I am a huge fan of his. My wife and I were at the Pantages for the filming of Stop Making Sense, so I sensed that he would find a musical way into what the film is trying to say. And he did.
"Let Me Sell You a Dream is kick-ass. And, in writing the lyrics, David dug deep into the sayings of Musk himself to get to ‘extremely hard core,’ foot-tapping sardonic poetry.”
Musk premieres at the Venice International Film Festival next week and is set to hit cinemas in October. It’s a bum-punishing 235 minutes (that’s nearly four hours long) and you’d have to assume is a weighty, as well as lengthy, examination of the curious individual who has ended up as the world’s richest man.
Musk himself seems to have already decided he doesn’t like it. When news of the project broke in early 2023, the Tesla boss predicted on his social media platform Twitter/ X that it would be a “hit-piece”. Gibney responded by asking the not-unreasonable question: “How would you know?”
