music.wikisort.org - Composition

"Life During Wartime" is a song by the American new wave band Talking Heads, released as the first single from their 1979 album Fear of Music.[1] It peaked at #80 on the US Billboard Pop Singles Chart.

"Life During Wartime"
UK vinyl single
Single by Talking Heads
from the album Fear of Music and The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads
B-side	"Electric Guitar (1979)"
Released	September 1979, 1982 (live)
Genre	New wave, post-punk, dance-punk
Length	3:41 5:52 (live)
Label	Sire
Songwriter(s)	David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth
Producer(s)	Brian Eno, Talking Heads Gary Goetzman (live)
Talking Heads singles chronology
"Take Me to the River" (1978) "Life During Wartime" (1979) "I Zimbra" (1980)
"Houses in Motion" (alternate mix) (1981) "Life During Wartime" (Live) (1982) Burning Down the House (1983)
Alternative release
US vinyl single
Official Audio
"Life During Wartime" (2005 Remaster) on YouTube

The song is also performed in the 1984 film Stop Making Sense, which depicts a Talking Heads concert. The performance featured in the film prominently features aerobic exercising and jogging by David Byrne and background singers. The Stop Making Sense live version of the track is featured in the film's accompanying soundtrack album. Its official title as a single, "Life During Wartime (This Ain't No Party... This Ain't No Disco... This Ain't No Foolin' Around)", makes it one of the longest-titled singles.[2]

The song is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.[3]

Origin

In David Bowman's book This Must Be the Place: The Adventures of Talking Heads in the Twentieth Century Byrne is quoted as describing the genesis of the song:

David wrote nine of the album's eleven tracks. Two numbers came out of jamming. The first would be called "Life During Wartime." David's lyrics describe a Walker Percy-ish post-apocalyptic landscape where a revolutionary hides out in a deserted cemetery, surviving on peanut butter. "I wrote this in my loft on Seventh and Avenue A," David later said, "I was thinking about Baader-Meinhof. Patty Hearst. Tompkins Square. This a song about living in Alphabet City."[4]

AllMusic's Bill Janowitz reviewed the song, calling attention to its nearness to funk, saying that it is a "sort of apocalyptic punk/funk merge" comparable to Prince's later hit single "1999".[5] In 2012, The New Yorker described "Life During Wartime" as, "an apocalyptic swamp-funk transmission in four-four time," adding "[it] is the band’s pinnacle, and the song is still a hell of a thing to hear."[6]

Lyrics

The lyrics are told from the point of view of someone involved in clandestine activities in the U.S. (the cities Houston, Detroit, and Pittsburgh are mentioned) during some sort of civil unrest or dystopian environment.[5]

The line "This ain't no Mudd Club or CBGB" refers to two New York music venues at which the band performed in the 1970s.[5]

"The line 'This ain't no disco' sure stuck!" remarks Byrne in the liner notes of Once in a Lifetime: The Best of Talking Heads. "Remember when they would build bonfires of Donna Summer records? Well, we liked some disco music! It's called 'dance music' now. Some of it was radical, camp, silly, transcendent and disposable. So it was funny that we were sometimes seen as the flag-bearers of the anti-disco movement."

Charts

Chart (1979)	Peak position
US Billboard Hot 100[7]	80

Chart runs

• Billboard Hot 100[8] (5 weeks, entered November 3): Reached #80

Personnel

• David Byrne - vocals, guitar
• Jerry Harrison - synthesizers
• Tina Weymouth - bass guitar
• Chris Frantz - drums
• Ari and Gene Wilder - congas[9][10]

Other versions

An alternative mix of the song featuring heavy guitar was released on the 2005 compilation Talking Heads.

Live versions

• 1980 Remain in Light tour version, appeared on the 1982 live compilation album The Name Of This Band Is Talking Heads
• 1983 Stop Making Sense tour version, appeared on the album and film of the same name.
• 1992 David Byrne solo version, from the Between the Teeth film.[11]
• 2001 David Byrne solo version appeared on the 2007 album and film Live From Austin TX
• 2003 David Byrne solo version appeared on the Live at Union Chapel film.
• 2004 David Byrne and Caetano Veloso version, featured on the 2012 album Live at Carnegie Hall
• 2009 David Byrne solo version, featuring in the 2010 film Ride, Rise, Roar

Cover versions

The Staple Singers covered this song on their eponymous 1985 album.[12][13]

In other media

• In the 2020 video game Cyberpunk 2077, a mission is named after the song.

References

External links

• Life During Wartime (Remastered) on YouTube

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