Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime

I Love 1981 - pt. 6
The UK Top 20 may have seemed an unlikely place to find a relatively little known "alternative" post-punk art-rock band from New York. Yet that's exactly where Talking Heads found themselves in 1981 with their single "Once In a Lifetime", and so, to paraphrase the song itself, you may ask yourself: how did they get there?
Originally released on the Remain in Light album in 1980, the track was written by the band and Brian Eno who also produced. He was also responsible for introducing Talking Heads to the jerky start/stop rhthms championed by Nigerian multi-instrumentalist Fela Kuti, which form the song's structure.

The existentialist lyrics, referring to some kind of mid-life crisis of a middle-American male - "beautiful house / beautiful wife / behind the wheel of a large automobile" etc., - somehow appealed to the upcoming British nouveaux riches, who clearly pined for such a lifestyle, as well as Radio 1 DJS who played the record across the board and allowed it to get to no. 14 in mid-March. The track is also fitted in nicely with the new art/dance ethic rife in London clubs and now moving up into the provinces, playing nicely between the fashionable dance songs of the moment.

Arty is very much the keyword for the accompanying video - one of the first of its kind - with leadman David Byrne doing some pretty funny 'dancing' super-imposed onto backdrops of 'ethnic' dancers and some early video "special" effects, while bringing the "water theme" of the chorus nicely into play.

Much as the arty nouveau-funk stance quickly became fashionable, Talking Heads failed to repeat the commerical success of Lifetime save for the singles "Road in Nowhere" and "And She Was" in 1985. They soon returned to 'cult' status although their ensuing albums did relatively well in Britain as in their native U.S. where they also did good with the mighty Burning Down the House in 1983, utterly and criminally ignored in the UK.



Here's the official vid but be sure to have a look at the live version from the Stop Making Sense film here