"Life During Wartime" | ||||
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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 |
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Genre | ||||
Length |
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Label | Sire | |||
Songwriter(s) | ||||
Producer(s) |
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Talking Heads singles chronology | ||||
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Alternative release | ||||
Official audio | ||||
"Life During Wartime" (2005 Remaster) on YouTube |
"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 . [2] It entered the US Billboard Pop Singles Chart on November 3,1979,and peaked at number 80,spending a total of five weeks on the chart. [3]
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. [4]
The song is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. [5]
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." [6]
Record World called it "a brilliant futuristic treatise on urban guerilla warfare." [7]
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". [8] 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." [9]
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. [8]
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. [8]
"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."
Chart (1979) | Peak position |
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US Billboard Hot 100 [12] | 80 |
An alternate mix of the song featuring heavy guitar played by Brian Eno was released on the 2005 compilation Talking Heads and the 2005 expanded CD reissue of Fear of Music. This version of the song is longer (4:07 v 3:41) and does not fade out as early, with extra verses that are not heard in the regular album version.
The Staple Singers covered this song on their eponymous 1985 album. [14] [15]
Talking Heads were an American new wave band formed in 1975 in New York City. The band was composed of David Byrne, Chris Frantz (drums), Tina Weymouth (bass) and Jerry Harrison. Described as "one of the most critically acclaimed bands of the '80s," Talking Heads helped to pioneer new wave music by combining elements of punk, art rock, funk, and world music with an anxious yet clean-cut image.
David Byrne is a Scottish-American singer, songwriter, musician, record producer, actor, writer, music theorist, visual artist, and filmmaker. He was a founding member, principal songwriter, lead singer, and guitarist of the American new wave band Talking Heads.
Charles Edwin Hatcher , known by his stage name Edwin Starr, was an American singer and songwriter. He is best remembered for his Norman Whitfield-produced Motown singles of the 1970s, most notably the number-one hit "War".
Fear of Music is the third studio album by the American new wave band Talking Heads, released on August 3, 1979, by Sire Records. It was recorded at locations in New York City during April and May 1979 and was produced by Brian Eno and Talking Heads. The album reached number 21 on the Billboard 200 and number 33 on the UK Albums Chart. It spawned the singles "Life During Wartime", "I Zimbra", and "Cities".
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Speaking in Tongues is the fifth studio album by the American rock band Talking Heads, released on June 1, 1983, by Sire Records. After their split with producer Brian Eno and a short hiatus, which allowed the individual members to pursue side projects, recording began in 1982. It became the band's commercial breakthrough and produced the band's sole US top-ten hit, "Burning Down the House", which reached No. 9 in the Billboard Chart.
"This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" is a song by new wave band Talking Heads. The closing track of their fifth studio album Speaking in Tongues, it was released in November 1983 as the second and final studio single from the album; a live version would be released as a single in 1986. The lyrics were written by frontman David Byrne, and the music was written by Byrne and the other members of the band, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison.
The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads is a double live album by the American new wave band Talking Heads, released in 1982 by Sire Records. The first LP features the original quartet in recordings from 1977 and 1979, and the second LP features the expanded ten-piece lineup that toured in 1980 and 1981. The album contains live versions of songs that appear on their first four studio albums: Talking Heads: 77, More Songs About Buildings and Food, Fear of Music, and Remain in Light.
"Walk On By" is a song written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David for singer Dionne Warwick in 1963. Warwick's recording of the song peaked at number 6 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 1 on the Cash Box Rhythm and Blues Chart In June 1964 and was nominated for a 1965 Grammy Award for the Best Rhythm and Blues Recording.
"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" is a song written by Bennie Benjamin, Horace Ott and Sol Marcus for American singer-songwriter and pianist Nina Simone, who recorded the first version in 1964. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" has been covered by many artists. Two of the covers were transatlantic hits, the first in 1965 by the Animals, which was a blues rock version; and in 1977 by the disco group Santa Esmeralda, which was a four-on-the-floor rearrangement. A 1986 cover by new wave musician Elvis Costello found success in Britain and Ireland.
"Take Me to the River" is a 1974 song written by singer Al Green and guitarist Mabon "Teenie" Hodges. Hit versions were recorded by Syl Johnson, Talking Heads and Delbert McClinton. In 2004, Al Green's original version was ranked number 117 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
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"One Nation Under a Groove" is a 1978 song by Funkadelic, the title track from their album of the same name. It has endured as a dance funk classic and is probably Funkadelic's most widely known song. "One Nation Under a Groove" was Funkadelic's first million selling single, as well as the third million selling single for the P-Funk organization overall.
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"Cities" is a single, released in 1980, by the American new wave band Talking Heads. It is the fourth track on the 1979 album Fear of Music.
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