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Featuring funky African polyrhythms, the album became an influential post punk, world music and New Wave recording. Remain in Light uniquely blended African-American, continental African and white American musical forms; Rolling Stone magazine's Ken Tucker noted at the time that there had rarely been "a larger gap between what black and white audiences were listening to." In a review of the album, fellow Rolling Stone writer Gavin Edwards commented that "the Talking Heads had already mastered minimalist funk, but here they built jams around thick, slurred rhythms." Many fans and critics of Remain in Light have said that the album is an extended groove whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Apart from the music, the lyrical themes explored on the album reflect what Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians writer Robert Walser considers a postmodern character, in that "....[they] depict disorientation, ironic distance and distrust of centering narratives." As a result of its polyrhythmic architecture and collaborative, funk-driven songs, Remain in Light compelled Talking Heads to include seven additional musicians, including guitarist Adrian Belew and Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, on their concert tour in support of the album.
The final track on the album, "The Overload", was Talking Heads' attempt to emulate the sound of the band Joy Division. This is in spite of the fact that no one in the band had actually heard the music of Joy Division. Rather, it was based on an idea of what Joy Division might sound like.
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