David Byrne Built a Song Entirely From Elon Musk Quotes

David Byrne and composer Daniel Pemberton have released "Let Me Sell You a Dream," a song whose lyrics consist entirely of Elon Musk quotes. The track was written for Musk, Alex Gibney's documentary that reaches theaters nationwide on October 16.

Byrne has used this method before. On his 2010 project Here Lies Love, he repurposed statements by Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos as lyrics. For the new song, he drew phrases from interviews and public statements by the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and X.

Why quote Musk instead of criticizing him?

"It would be too easy and probably not as much fun to overtly criticize Musk," Byrne said. "Better, I thought, to try and get inside his head a little bit, to use phrases he himself has used in interviews and statements, and let the character in the song be the one who describes himself."

Byrne arranged the lyrics and melody before watching the film. He accepted the commission because he knew the work of both Pemberton and Gibney, the Academy Award-winning director of Going Clear and The Inventor, and thought the project "sounded like fun."

How did Gibney make a documentary without its subject?

Musk declined to be interviewed for the film. Gibney instead built the nearly four-hour documentary from Musk's own words, recorded in podcasts, previous interviews, and outtakes from other documentaries. The film also features original interviews with Musk's ex-partners, journalists, engineers, and others.

What happened when Bleecker Street tried to advertise it?

The film's distributor, Bleecker Street, hit an obstacle last month while promoting the documentary. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok all refused to run the Musk trailer as paid advertising, flagging it as "political" content. After the ban drew press coverage, the social media platforms reversed course and called it "an error."

Byrne's latest album, Who Is the Sky?, is reviewed here by Stephen Thomas Erlewine. With Musk opening October 16, the song gives the documentary a second life as a standalone piece — one in which the world's most-publicized tech executive supplies his own lyrics without ever setting foot in the studio.