After the release of Fear of Music in 1979, Talking Heads and Eno sought to dispel notions of the band as a mere vehicle for frontman and songwriter David Byrne.

Drawing influence from Nigerian Afrobeat musician Fela Kuti, they blended African polyrhythms and funk with electronics, recording instrumental tracks as a series of looping grooves.

Byrne struggled with writer's block, but adopted a scattered, stream-of-consciousness lyrical style inspired by early rap and academic literature on Africa.

The album artwork was conceived by the bassist, Tina Weymouth, and the drummer, Chris Frantz, with the help of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's computers and design company, M&Co.

[3] In January 1980, the members of Talking Heads returned to New York City after touring in support of their 1979 album Fear of Music, and took time off to pursue personal interests.

They became involved in Haitian Vodou religious ceremonies, practiced native percussion instruments, and socialised with the reggae rhythm section of Sly and Robbie.

[5] Frantz and Weymouth ended their holiday by purchasing an apartment above Compass Point Studios in Nassau, Bahamas, where Talking Heads and Eno had recorded More Songs About Buildings and Food in 1978.

[10] Before the studio sessions began, the band's friend David Gans told them that "the things one doesn't intend are the seeds for a more interesting future", encouraging them to experiment, improvise and make use of "mistakes".

"[18] According to Frantz, the band had met with Jamaican reggae producer Lee "Scratch" Perry in New York and arranged to record with him at Compass Point, but he did not show up to the sessions.

[19] After a few sessions at Compass Point, engineer Rhett Davies left following an argument with Eno over the fast pace of recording, and Steven Stanley stepped in to replace him.

In New York City, Byrne struggled with writer's block,[13] Harrison and Eno spent their time tweaking the compositions recorded in the Bahamas, and Frantz and Weymouth often did not show up at the studio.

[24] Singer Robert Palmer, who had recorded his album Clues at the same studio shortly before Talking Heads used the facility, contributed additional percussion to Remain in Light.

[45] Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine called the album a "dense amalgam of African percussion, funk bass and keyboards, pop songs, and electronics.

[25] Although the unorthodox guitar solo has often been credited to Adrian Belew, it was in fact performed by Byrne (manipulating a Lexicon Prime Time digital delay unit).

[50] While some critics deemed the song "a kind of prescient jab at the excesses of the 1980s", Byrne disagreed with this categorization and commented that its lyrics were meant to be taken literally: "We're largely unconscious.

[13] "Houses in Motion" incorporates long brass performances by Hassell, while "Listening Wind" features Arabic music influences, with Belew adding textural content via the Electric Mistress and "[bending] the sound up and down while working a delay and the volume control on my guitar".

[24] Closing track "The Overload" features "tribal-cum-industrial" beats created primarily by Harrison and Byrne alongside Belew's "growling guitar atmospherics".

[24][51] Weymouth and Frantz conceived the cover art with the help of Massachusetts Institute of Technology researcher Walter Bender and his ArcMac team (the precursor to the MIT Media Lab).

[55] Weymouth and Frantz decided to use the joint credit acronym C/T for the artwork, while Bender and Fisher used initials and code names because the project was not an official MIT venture.

[28] The band expanded to nine musicians for the tours in support of the album, with Harrison recruiting Belew, Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, bassist Busta "Cherry" Jones, Ashford & Simpson percussionist Steven Scales, and backing vocalist Dolette MacDonald.

[4] The larger group performed soundchecks in Frantz's and Weymouth's loft by following the rhythms established by Worrell, who had studied at the New England Conservatory and Juilliard School.

[58] On August 27, the expanded Talking Heads performed a showcase of tracks to an 8,000-person full house at the Wollman Rink, as well as approximately another 10,000 seated on the grass outside the walls, in Central Park.

"[40] Unusually, the album's press release included a bibliography submitted by Byrne and Eno citing books by Chernoff and others to provide context for how the songs were conceived.

"[74] Robert Christgau, in The Village Voice, called the record one "in which David Byrne conquers his fear of music in a visionary Afrofunk synthesis—clear-eyed, detached, almost mystically optimistic".

[77] Sandy Robertson of Sounds praised the record's innovation,[78] while Billboard wrote, "Just about every LP Talking Heads has released in the last four years has wound up on virtually every critics' best of list.

[80] In a 2008 review, Sean Fennessey of Vibe concluded, "Talking Heads took African polyrhythms to NYC and made a return trip with elegant, alien post-punk in tow.

"[32] Remain in Light was named the best album of 1980 by Sounds, ahead of the Skids' The Absolute Game, and by Melody Maker,[81][82] while The New York Times included it in its unnumbered shortlist of the 10 best records issued that year.

[85] It featured at number three—behind London Calling and Bruce Springsteen's The River—in The Village Voice's 1980 Pazz & Jop critics' poll, which aggregates the votes of hundreds of prominent reviewers.

[100] The Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood had assumed it was composed of loops, but learnt from Harrison that Talking Heads had instead recorded themselves playing the parts repetitively.

In 2023, they expanded the project to a full North American tour, and included material from Belew's period in the Talking Heads-influenced 1980s incarnation of King Crimson.