Once In A Lifetime Talking Heads

‘Once in a Lifetime’ is one of the Talking Heads’ best songs. The band, one of the most innovative of all time, emerged in the late 1970s and were supremely popular in the next decade, amassing great success and influencing many bands that would spring up out of their wake. David Byrne’s bizarre songwriting and the band’s offbeat, against-the-grain song structures helped signify them as worthy of such accolades. ‘Once in a Lifetime’ is arguably the band’s signature song.

In it, Byrne takes the point of view of a confused middle-aged person wondering aloud about how he got to that point in his life. The concept of a mid-life crisis is something none of us hope to experience when we get into the ‘prime of our lives’, yet it is also something that comes out of emotions we can relate to. We all want to live our lives according to our own means, and hopefully reach a lifestyle we are happy with.

To coin the song’s lyrics, we may ask ourselves, “how did I get here?” if things do not end up how we would have wished. ‘Once in a Lifetime’ taps into emotions none of us want to feel once we qualify for a mid-life crisis, yet it may happen to us nonetheless.

The song is one of the Talking Heads’ best. The band has an important position in music history, as they were incredibly creative for their time and were monumentally influential on future artists. Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor heralds their album Remain in Light as his personal favorite, and Radiohead’s Thom Yorke has listed Talking Heads as his favorite band. Yorke’s band even named themselves after a TH song, so the influence is obvious. Talking Heads were a fantastic band, and ‘Once in a Lifetime’ is one of their most well-known and best songs.