David Byrne Turns Elon Musk Quotes Into Song for New Documentary

David Byrne and Daniel Pemberton have released a new song built entirely from Elon Musk's own words.

"Let Me Sell You a Dream" came out on 8 October as an original track for Musk, the forthcoming documentary about the Tesla and SpaceX chief executive. Matador Records confirmed it as an original song written for the film, and music press noted the same release date.

Byrne performs the track. He selected and ordered the Musk lines and wrote the melody before he had seen the finished film, according to Pitchfork.

The result has been described as a protopunk song, a spare, fast and direct early form of punk rock, in reporting by Rolling Stone. The cut-and-paste method is not new for Byrne. He previously built the 2010 project Here Lies Love around statements by Imelda Marcos.

The film it was made for is large in scale. Musk is directed by Alex Gibney and runs to nearly four hours. Musk declined to be interviewed, so Gibney assembled his voice from podcasts, previous interviews and outtakes from other documentaries. Around that archive sit new interviews with former partners, journalists, engineers and others.

Musk is due in cinemas across the United States on 16 October. The song was produced to meet the Academy's eligibility rules for Best Original Song, which require a song written specifically for its film, as reported by Variety.

The rollout has already run into a dispute over advertising. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok first refused to run the Musk trailer as paid advertising after flagging it as political content. The platforms later allowed it and called the earlier refusals errors.

For viewers, this means a strange listening test. Byrne did not write about Musk. He wrote with Musk's public sentences, set to his own tune.