David Byrne has kept remarkably busy in the 22 years since his beloved group Talking Heads stopped recording.

His latest endeavor is a song cycle composed with British electronic musician Fatboy Slim. Here Lies Love is a study of former Filipino first lady Imelda Marcos and her childhood servant Estrella, spanning two discs and 22 vocalists, 20 of them being women.

Imelda Marcos is certainly intriguing. She’s the one who, after fleeing the presidential palace into exile in 1986, was discovered to possess 3,000 pairs of shoes. David Byrne explains on his website that he wanted to investigate “what drives a powerful person,” bringing “a kind of theater to the disco.”

This is ambitious even for a master of lyrical characterization like Byrne. It doesn’t quite succeed due to surprisingly flat lyrics.

Sung by characters in Imelda’s universe, the songs too often fall into literal accounts or platitudinous celebrations of her persona. A notable exception is “How Are You?,” a song in which Nellie McKay sings in the fragmentary phrases of an English learner.

Among the vocalists, Cyndi Lauper’s duet with Tori Amos is a fascinating pairing. Allison Moorer’s deeper country tones are a lush break from the predominantly poppy proceedings. The album opens brilliantly with the controlled vocal punch of Florence Welch.

The album’s electronic textures suggest Fatboy Slim’s hand. The instrumentation encompasses Latin beats, jazzy rave-ups and classic rock riffage. Sometimes it seems crafted to a specific singer, but sometimes it just feels like stock worldbeat dance-pop.

The record is by no means bad, and some of these songs might make great singles, but it’s hard to imagine spending much time with this over-long exercise in stylistic water-treading.