Please Do Watch David Byrne And Santigold’s “Please Don’t” Video

Robbie Daw | March 18, 2010 8:58 am

As the release of David Byrne and Fatboy Slim’s concept double-album Here Lies Love draws closer (it’s out April 6), the onetime Talking Heads frontman has posted the video for the LP’s first promo single “Please Don’t”—which features Santigold on vocals—on his official site. And keeping with the Imelda Marcos theme of the project, the clip is comprised entirely of news footage of the widow of former Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos. Watch below.

“We did a photo session for a magazine the other day, and I told the interviewer that on this song, by the time you get to the chorus, she owns it,” Byrne wrote on his website. “She’s turned it into a Santigold song. Perfect.”

He also added the following:

“There are six of these videos that have been completed for this project. Most, like this one, use news and archival footage to, well, show that every word of the song is true! Most of the lyrics on this one are lifted gently from interviews and quotations—the ‘please don’t’ chorus especially. At some point as first lady, Imelda began to feel that she could help Philippine interests by charming world leaders into seeing things her way. ‘Handbag diplomacy’ she called it—as she liked to imply that to solve a problem, she could bypass President Marcos and just grab a handbag and hop on a plane with some of her assistants. It sometimes worked! There was, for example, an Islamic-backed insurgency rising in the south of the Philippine archipelago, and she thought that a leader in that part of the world, Qaddafi in this case, might help pull the plug on that support if he saw things her way. Apparently he did—the funding stopped and the insurrection lost momentum, and she later described him as a pushover, a mama’s boy.”

Sia, who also contributes vocals to Here Lies Love, spoke to Idolator recently about the album. “David played me some of the other stuff when I went in to do my vocals and I was seriously blown away,” she said. “The Santigold track is so amazing. And the Roisin Murphy track is so amazing… It was like David just emailed me and asked me if I wanted to sing on a track. I was like, um, hi—you’re David Byrne. Yes, yes, yes. The answer is always yes!”

The Santigold song “Please Don’t” is available at David Byrne’s official site as a free download when you pre-order Here Lies Love.