In December 2007, David Byrne announced on the BBC Radio music show The Weekender that he was working with former collaborator Brian Eno on a brand new album of "proper songs," describing it as a "completely different thing" from the experimental My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.

While the two were discussing the 2006 re-release of that album at a dinner party, Eno suggested adding lyrics and vocals[3] to some of his unfinished songs,[4] some of which were eight years old.

[19] The musicians exchanged Eno's demos with the lyrics and vocal melodies completed by Byrne over e-mail and by June 2008, 14 songs had been recorded.

[22] He characterized the process as very slow and full of trepidation,[23] in part because of expectations from their previous collaboration[24] and also due to the strict division of labor they had between writing instrumentation and vocalization.

[36] Byrne initially had a long delay in writing material,[37] but as the project progressed, he began working several hours a day on the album[19] and put his collaboration with Fatboy Slim on hold to finish the songs in the early part of 2008.

[45] In addition to subtle Biblical themes in the lyrics,[3] Eno was influenced by gospel musicality, which he initially discovered through Talking Heads while working on More Songs About Buildings and Food[46] by listening to "Surrender to His Will" by Reverend Maceo Woods and The Christian Tabernacle Choir.

[13] While Byrne considers the music "[un]like any contemporary gospel record that you would hear out there," it is "informed by that feeling and those kind of lyrics, which allude to hope in the face of despair.

"[11] The tension between optimism and pessimism[20] and the spiritual themes quickly emerged over the course of a year in which Byrne was writing lyrics,[55] which he has speculated might be an antidote to being "completely pessimistic and cynical about politics and the state of the world;"[23] for instance, "The River"[56] is about the effects of Hurricane Katrina.

[55] He has also cited the political climate of the Iraq War, the beginning of the late-2000s recession,[57] the policies of the George W. Bush administration,[58] and his 2004 divorce from Adelle Lutz[35] as factors that inspired him to create uplifting music.

[63] The story of the Lost Boys of Sudan is emblematic of the spiritual themes of the album as they go through "all kinds of unrelenting horrors, but [are] eternally hopeful and even cheerful, in a way that defies all logic.

Later that month,[65] multi-instrumentalist and previous Eno collaborator Leo Abrahams was enlisted to perform guitar, percussion instruments, and piano in his London home studio.

Mixing continued through June 2008 in New York[70] by previous Byrne collaborator Patrick Dillett at Kampo Studios, who recorded brass and percussion.

Upon repeated listenings to the album, he became convinced that there was a sinister element to the setting and provided clues to the "dark edge"[75] of the scene, such as a discarded condom wrapper in the gutter,[72] a man looking out the window with binoculars,[61] and a gasoline canteen in the kitchen.

[77] The urban themes of the packaging are expanded in this edition, with the album entitled "Stick" and the bonus content "Rock"; discs are designed to look like they are covered in grass.

[3] The duo released the album from other online digital music services starting the following month,[9] including 7digital, Amazon MP3, eMusic, the iTunes Store,[79] Napster, and the Zune Marketplace.

[83] This album is catalogued as the second release from Byrne's vanity label Todo Mundo after Big Love: Hymnal; copies of the CD were marked CD-TODO-002.

The CD was released in Japan with a bonus track—"Poor Boy" (Eno & Leo Abrahams Remix)—and obi strip in November 2008 through Beat Records with catalogue number BRC-218.

[120] Audra Schroeder of The Austin Chronicle noted "Thirty years after first collaborating on the Talking Heads, these two don't have to mine the past since there's nothing that remarkable about Everything.

Jim DeRogatis from the Chicago Sun-Times observed: Reviews have emphasized the contrast between optimism and foreboding on the album,[125] as well as the struggle of humanity against technology.

[126] In addition, several reviewers[100] have noted parallels between this album and Byrne's Big Love: Hymnal,[9] particularly their common spiritual themes[127] and atmospheric moods.

[157] Several songs from this album appeared on The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop singles poll for 2008—"Strange Overtones" came in at 60, "Life Is Long" placed 337, "My Big Nurse" was 350, "Everything That Happens" ended up at 748, and "I Feel My Stuff" reached 942.

[24] Their business model also allowed them to self-release and plan a tour immediately after finishing the music production, rather than wait months for record label advancement.

[173] The duo carefully avoided Internet leaks by not giving out promotional copies of the album to journalists, but Byrne did preview the song "One Fine Day" prior to the release by performing it with a choir of senior citizens[44] and Eno invited Mark Coles for the BBC World Service program The Beat to his home to listen to the songs on Eno's laptop.

[180] A month after releasing the album, Byrne was skeptical of market saturation claiming "I sense that a lot of people don't know we have a record out" and hoped to counterbalance that ignorance with his tour.

[183] Like the entirety of the recording process, the marketing was self-financed and controlled by the artists,[184] with Topspin taking a portion of the money made from digital sales.

[43] The company used viral marketing techniques to collect potential customers' e-mail addresses and encourage them to post the album streaming on their blogs.

[189] Key to their success was the software that Topspin Media developed[190] and later commercially released as a bundle for other companies and artists to use, explaining that "In the first eight weeks following the launch of the David Byrne and Brian Eno self-released record, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, the Topspin platform helped us generate Direct-to-Fan revenue at the very least the equivalent to what we would have expected from a label advance,"[191] that went directly to Byrne and Eno.

[61] Byrne was initially uninvolved in the choreography, but made more suggestions as the tour went on and after he saw a live performance by Deerhoof that incorporated dancing with instruments.

By playing music from all of their collaborations, Byrne hoped to "draw a line linking this new material with what we did 30 years ago"[201] with the goal of clarifying the connection between all of the duo's previous work.

[209] The documentary includes concert footage, film of the planning and rehearsals for the tour, and exclusive interviews with Byrne, Eno, and the supporting musicians and dancers.