| "Once in a Lifetime" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Cover art of UK 7-inch and 12-inch vinyl singles | ||||
| Single byTalking Heads | ||||
| from the albumRemain in Light | ||||
| B-side |
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| Released | January 1981[1] | |||
| Recorded | July–August 1980 | |||
| Studio |
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| Genre | New wave,[2][3]rock,[4]art pop[5][6][7] | |||
| Length | 4:19 | |||
| Label | Sire | |||
| Songwriters | ||||
| Producer | Brian Eno | |||
| Talking Heads singles chronology | ||||
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| Music video | ||||
| "Once in a Lifetime" onYouTube | ||||
| Alternative release | ||||
 A-side label of US vinyl single | ||||
"Once in a Lifetime" is a song by the Americannew wave bandTalking Heads, produced and cowritten byBrian Eno. It was released in January 1981 throughSire Records as the first single from Talking Heads' fourth studio album,Remain in Light (1980).
Eno and Talking Heads developed "Once in a Lifetime" through extensivejams, inspired byAfrobeat musicians such asFela Kuti.David Byrne's vocals were inspired by preachers delivering sermons, with lyrics aboutexistential crisis and theunconscious. In the music video, directed by Byrne andToni Basil, Byrne dances erratically over footage of religious rituals.
"Once in a Lifetime" wascertified platinum in the UK in 2023. A live version, taken from the 1984 concert filmStop Making Sense, charted in 1986 on theBillboard Hot 100.NPR named "Once in a Lifetime" one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century, and theRock and Roll Hall of Fame named it one of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll".Rolling Stone placed it at number 28 on its 2021 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", and named its music video the 81st-best.
Like other songs onRemain in Light, Talking Heads and the producerBrian Eno developed "Once in a Lifetime" by recordingjams, isolating the best parts, and learning to play them repetitively.[8] The English musicianRobert Palmer joined the jam on guitar and percussion.[8] The technique was influenced by earlyhip hop and theAfrobeat music of artists such asFela Kuti, which Eno had introduced to the band. The singer,David Byrne, likened the process to modernlooping andsampling, describing the band as "human samplers".[8] He said "Once in a Lifetime" was a result of the band trying and failing to playfunk, inadvertently creating something new instead.[8]
The song was initially not one of Eno's favorites, and the band almost abandoned it. The keyboardist,Jerry Harrison, said the lack ofchord changes and the "trance"-like feeling made it hard to delineate the song into verses and choruses.[9][10] However, Byrne had faith in the song and felt he could write lyrics to it. Eno developed the chorus melody by singing wordlessly, and the song "fell into place".[8] Harrison developed the "bubbly" synthesizerarpeggio, and added theHammond organ climax, inspired bythe Velvet Underground song "What Goes On".[8][11]
Eno interpreted the rhythm differently from the band, with the third beat of thebar as the first.[8] He encouraged the band members to interpret the beat in different ways, thereby exaggerating different rhythmic elements.[9] According to Eno, "This means the song has a funny balance, with two centers of gravity – their funk groove, and mydubby, reggae-ish understanding of it; a bit like the way Fela Kuti songs will have multiple rhythms going on at the same time, warping in and out of each other."[8]
According to the bassist,Tina Weymouth, the drummer,Chris Frantz, created thebassline by yelling during a jam, which she mimicked on bass guitar.[9] She wanted to leave space for the "cacophony" around her, and said: "I felt like I was pounding away like a carpenter, just nailing away to get it in the groove."[8] Eno removed the first bass note from the first beat of the bar, as he felt it was too "obvious", and rerecorded the part. When Talking Heads returned to New York City without Eno, the engineer had Weymouth record the bassline again. She said: "It wasn't a big fight between me and Brian, as it has sometimes been portrayed, it was just a musical dispute."[8]
Byrne improvised lines as if he were giving asermon, with acall-and-response chorus like a preacher and congregation. His vocals are "half-spoken, half-sung", with lyrics about living in a "beautiful house" with a "beautiful wife" and a "large automobile".[12][13]
TheGuardian writer Jack Malcolm suggested that "Once in a Lifetime" can be read "as an art-pop rumination on the existential ticking time bomb of uncheckedconsumerism and advancing age".[13] According to theAllMusic critic Steve Huey, the lyrics address "the drudgery of living life according to social expectations, and pursuing commonly accepted trophies (a large automobile, beautiful house, beautiful wife)".[12] Although the narrator has these trophies, he questions whether they are real and how he acquired them, a kind ofexistential crisis.[14] The Australian songwriterDavid Bridie connected the mentions of water in thegospel-like chorus to Harrison's "watery" synthesizer arpeggio.[11]
Byrne denied that the lyrics addressyuppie greed and said they were about theunconscious: "We operate half-awake or on autopilot and end up, whatever, with a house and family and job and everything else, and we haven't really stopped to ask ourselves, 'How did I get here?'"[9] Eno said that Byrne combined the "blood-and-thunder intonation of the preacher" with optimistic lyrics: "It's saying what a fantastic place we live in, let's celebrate it. That was a radical thing to do when everyone was so miserable and grey!"[8]
In the "Once in a Lifetime" music video, Byrne appears in a large, empty white room, dressed in a suit, bowtie and glasses. In the background, inserted viabluescreen, footage of religious rituals or multiple Byrnes appears. Byrne dances erratically, imitating the movements of the rituals and moving in "spasmic" full-body contortions. At the end of the video, a "normal" version of Byrne appears in a black room, dressed in a white open-collared shirt without glasses.[15]
The video was directed by Byrne andToni Basil and choreographed by Basil.[8] They studiedarchive footage of rituals by groups including African tribes, Japanese sects, people in trances, and evangelists such asErnest Angley.[8][16] Byrne said he studied "the general phenomenon of religious ectsasy" and derived movements from them, making them into "a sort of spastic dance".[17] According to Basil, "David kind of choreographed himself. I set up the camera, put him in front of it, and asked him to absorb those ideas. Then I left the room so he could be alone with himself ... I just helped to stylize his moves a little."[8]
To emphasize Byrne's jerky movements, Basil used an "old-fashioned"zoom lens. The video was made on a low budget; Basil described it as "about as low-tech as you could get and still be broadcastable".[8] Byrne wanted it to be a standalone artwork and to serve as more than a promotional product.[18]
In 1981, "Once in a Lifetime" reachedno. 24 on theDutch Top 40 in February[19] andno. 14 on theUK singles chart in March.[20] In the UK, it wascertified silver in January 2018, gold in April 2021, and platinum in December 2023.[21] At the beginning of theCOVID-19 lockdowns in the US, "Once in a Lifetime" reached number 10 onRock Digital Song Sales.[22]
A 12-inch promotional dance club mix was released in October 1984.[23] A live version, taken from the 1984 concert filmStop Making Sense, reached number 91 on the USBillboard Hot 100 in 1986.[24] An early version, "Right Start", was released on the 2006Remain in Light reissue.[13]
In 2000,NPR named "Once in a Lifetime" one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.[25] In 2016, theRock and Roll Hall of Fame listed it as one of the"500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll",[26] and Malcolm Jack wrote inThe Guardian that the song "is a thing of dizzying power, beauty and mystery [...] it sounds like nothing else in the history of pop."[13] In 2018, the musicianTravis Morrison appeared on NPR'sAll Songs Considered, where he selected "Once in a Lifetime" as a "perfect song" and said: "The lyrics are astounding; they are meaningless and totally meaningful at the same time. That's as good as rock lyrics get."[27]
Rolling Stone ranked "Once in a Lifetime" number 28 on its 2021 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".[28] In 2023, the Australian songwriterDavid Bridie wrote that it was the "most perfect song of all time", writing that it was "cool and edgy" and yet could be played in supermarkets.[11] In the same year,American Songwriter named it the third-best Talking Heads song,[29] andRecord World called it "a polyrhythmic journey through his heart of darkness ... the vocal intensity and melodic beauty are enthralling".[30]
In 1989,Spin readers voted the "Once in a Lifetime" video the sixth-best of the 1980s.[31] In 2003, theBBC critic Chris Jones described the video as "hilarious" and "as compelling as it was in 1981".[32] In 2021,Rolling Stone named it the 81st-best music video.[33]"Weird Al" Yankovic recreated it in the music video for his 1989 song"UHF", with a similar suit and dance.[34] In 1996,Kermit the Frog performed "Once in a Lifetime" onMuppets Tonight while wearing Byrne's "big suit" and mimicking his dances fromStop Making Sense.[35]
Talking Heads
Additional personnel
| Chart (1981) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Australian Singles Chart[36] | 23 |
| Canadian Singles Chart[37] | 28 |
| Dutch Singles Chart[19] | 24 |
| Irish Singles Chart | 16 |
| UK Singles Chart[20] | 14 |
| USBillboardBubbling Under the Hot 100[38] | 103 |
| Chart (1985) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Dutch Singles Chart[19] | 22 |
| New Zealand Singles Chart[39] | 15 |
| USBillboardHot 100[38] | 91 |
| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| United Kingdom (BPI)[21] | Platinum | 600,000‡ |
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. | ||
"Lifetime" is also the epitome of 1980s art-pop...
It's an art pop anthem unlike anything else of its time.
Corbijn3 was invoked but never defined (see thehelp page).| Studio albums | |
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| Singles |
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| Tribute albums | |
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