Here Lies Love, David Byrne's 22-song cycle collaboration with Fatboy Slim (a.k.a. Norman Cook) on the life of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos is the subject of an exclusive five-page feature article in yesterday's Sunday Times Magazine out of the UK. In the article, writer Robert Sandall talks with both of the creators about the impetus for taking on a project about so notorious and often caricatured a figure of modern history.

It was perhaps for these very reasons, Sandall suggests, that Marcos and the as-yet lesser-known aspects of her story proved so worth the telling for Byrne, Cook, and the score of singers who signed on as vocalists for the recording, like Natalie Merchant, Tori Amos, Cyndi Lauper, Kate Pierson, Santigold, and St. Vincent.

There are certainly antecedents to the project, and it would not be the first time that so controversial a figure would make for an compelling character study through music. Some of the vocalists, Sandall explains, even "found in it echoes of John Adams’s modernist opera Nixon in China, a work that presented another controversial political figure in an unusually favourable light."

To hear what the artists had to say, you'll find the complete article at entertainment.timesonline.co.uk. To sample the album and pre-order your copy now, visit the Nonesuch Store.

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Earlier this month, Byrne spoke at the TED conference in Long Beach, California, participating in a session titled "Invention" and joining Thomas Dolby and string quartet Ethel to perform the Talking Heads classic "(Nothing But) Flowers." (Incidentally, Caetano Veloso recorded the song for his 2004 Nonesuch release, A Foreign Sound.) While at the conference, Byrne spoke with BoingBoing's Mark Frauenfelder. You can listen to the 10-minute audio interview now at boingboing.net.