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Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

"'Once in a Lifetime' is a song by New Wave band Talking Heads, released as the first single from their fourth studio album Remain in Light. The song was written by David Byrne, Brian Eno, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, and Tina Weymouth, and produced by Eno. It received critical acclaim, and was named one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century by National Public Radio.

At the time of its original release, the song gained modest chart success, peaking at #14 on the UK Singles Chart and at #31 in the Dutch singles chart. While the song failed to chart on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, various American 80s format radio stations have come to programming it in their playlists over the years. It was also an early MTV staple and was one of the most heavily played videos upon MTVs debut in August 1981.

A live version of the song taken from Talking Heads' concert film Stop Making Sense was released as a single in 1984, peaking at #91 on the Billboard Hot 100

Brian Eno introduced Fela Kuti's multiple rhythm music style to the band, and when producing used a different rhythm count to the band which results in a rhythm imbalance throughout the song. Jerry Harrison developed the synthesizer line and added the hammond organ climax, taken from Velvet Underground's 'What Goes On'. Eno sang nonsense verb sound blocks, which Byrne then converted into lyrics in the call and response style of American radio evangelists on the theme of moving through life with little awareness or questioning.

As the song essentially consisted of a repetitive 2 bar groove (with the pattern reversed between the verse and the chorus) Brian Eno decided to approach the production by allowing each of the band members to record overdubs of different rhythmic and musical ideas independently to each other, with each member being kept blind to what the others had put down on tape. In the final mix Eno faded between these different independent ideas at different parts of the song. This is very much in keeping with his production technique of Oblique Strategies.

The verses of the song consist of David Byrne speaking rather than singing. With the lyrics 'Letting the days go by, let the water hold me down,' the song has an existential mood to it, although it is usually interpreted to be a song dealing with the midlife crisis and the inevitable sacrifice of youthful ideals and dreams for conventional success." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_in_a_Lifetime_(Talking_Heads_song)

Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

"'Psycho Killer' is a song by American New Wave band Talking Heads from their 1977 album Talking Heads: 77, written by David Byrne, Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth. The band's 'signature debut hit' features lyrics which seem to represent the thoughts of a serial killer. Allmusic calls it a 'deceptively funky New Wave/No Wave song ... [with] an insistent rhythm, and one of the most memorable, driving basslines in rock & roll.'

'Psycho Killer' was the only song from the album to appear on the Billboard Pop Singles chart, peaking at number 92. It placed 32nd on the Triple J Hottest 100 in 1989, and peaked at #11 on the Dutch singles chart in 1977.

According to the preliminary lyric sheets copied onto the 2006 remaster of Talking Heads: 77, the song started off as a semi-narrative of the killer actually committing murders. Byrne has said of the song: 'When I started writing this (I got help later), I imagined Alice Cooper doing a Randy Newman-type ballad. Both the Joker and Hannibal Lecter were much more fascinating than the good guys. Everybody sort of roots for the bad guys in movies.'" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_Killer

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