Century of Song by Noah Lefevre

Author:Noah Lefevre [Lefevre, Noah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Page Street Publishing
Published: 2024-08-21T00:00:00+00:00

When “Once in a Lifetime” came out, the hippie dream was good and dead. The rise of disco and hard rock had brought with it a new wave of consumerism. Ronald Reagan was campaigning for president, and America was gearing up for a hypercapitalistic era of growth and greed. Although Byrne hadn’t intended it, “Once in a Lifetime” ended up serving as a cautionary tale for the oncoming generation. In trying to write a song about the unconscious, he had unwittingly written a song about the empty promises of consumer culture. In the song, a “beautiful house,” a “beautiful wife” and a “large automobile” bring no joy and no fulfillment, only a creeping ennui. This ennui is represented by the motif of water, made audible by Harrison’s keyboard line. The water is the inevitable flow of time and life. It moves beneath the singers’ feet, pushing them onward toward an inevitable end even as they seek escape in material pleasures.

Talking Heads paired the complex subtext of “Once in a Lifetime” with an abstract, surreal music video. In that video, the band used new blue screen technology to isolate footage of David Byrne performing an odd dance choreographed by director Toni Basil. Byrne and Harrison poured through videos of folk dances and religious rituals, and used them to create an absurd dance sequence. Multiple iterations of Byrne, sweaty and clad in a drab gray suit, are composited on a white background to underline the monotony of the life he’s singing about. Meanwhile, his jittering dance moves look the part of an inhuman ritual.

When “Once in a Lifetime” came out, music videos were just starting to catch on. Most consisted simply of live performances of the band, occasionally with interesting backdrops or novel costumes. This was something else entirely. It was a video with an oblique, artistic message. Rather than serving as a simple accompaniment for the song, the video for “Once in a Lifetime” underlined the lyrical themes and elevated the piece into a larger multimedia work.

Like many artists ahead of their time, Talking Heads didn’t get the due they deserved when “Once in a Lifetime” came out. A few critics in the know celebrated the piece, but it failed to have any chart success. As the decade progressed, more and more people would begin to realize the genius of the song. In 1981, MTV went on the air for the first time. As the standout video in a limited field, “Once in a Lifetime” saw tons of early rotation. Meanwhile, the ‘80s morphed into a decade of consumerist greed, and the song’s themes of alienation grew more and more prescient.

In the modern age, the song has only become more relevant as we reap what was sown in the ‘80s. So many people today find themselves cold and disconnected in a world that promises escape only through an endless cycle of consumption. Same as it ever was.

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