1979 song by Talking Heads
"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". 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.
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.
The song is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
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:
 ;templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" / ;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."
"Record World" called it "a brilliant futuristic treatise on urban guerilla warfare."
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". 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."
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.
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.
"The line 'This ain't no disco' sure stuck!" remarks Byrne in the liner notes of "". "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."
Critical reception.
"Life During Wartime" is widely regarded as one of the band's best songs. In 2023, "American Songwriter" ranked the song number nine on their list of the 10 greatest Talking Heads songs, and in 2024, "Paste" ranked the song number four on their list of the 30 greatest Talking Heads songs.
Other versions.
An alternative mix of the song, featuring prominent guitar playing by Robert Fripp, was released on the 2005 compilation "Talking Heads" and the 2005 expanded CD reissue of "Fear of Music". At 4:07 this version of the song is longer and does not fade out as early, with extra verses that are not heard in the original.
Cover versions.
The Staple Singers covered this song on their eponymous 1985 album.
References.
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