‘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 peaked at #80 on the US Billboard Pop Singles Chart. The song is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.
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."
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 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."
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.
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."
Label – Sire
Songwriters – David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, Tina Weymouth
Producers – Brian Eno, Talking Heads, Gary Goetzman (live)
SONG LYRICS
[Verse 1]Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons
Packed up and ready to go
Heard of some gravesites out by the highway
A place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire off in the distance
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstone, lived in the ghetto
I've lived all over this town
[Chorus 1]
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
This ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey-dovey
I ain't got time for that now
[Verse 2]
Transmit the message to the receiver
Hope for an answer some day
I got three passports, a couple of visas
You don't even know my real name
High on a hillside, the trucks are loading
Everything's ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime and I work in the nighttime
I might not ever get home
[Chorus 2]
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco
This ain't no fooling around
This ain't no Mudd Club, or C.B.G.B
I ain't got time for that now
[Verse 3]
Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, P. A.?
You oughta know not to stand by the window
Somebody'll see you up there
I got some groceries, some peanut butter
To last a couple of days
But I ain't got no speakers, ain't got no headphones
Ain't got no records to play
[Bridge]
Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time
Can't write a letter, can't send no postcard
I ain't got time for that now
[Outro]
Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock
We blended in with the crowd
We got computers, we're tapping phone lines
I know that that ain't allowed
We dress like students, we dress like housewives
Or in a suit and a tie
I changed my hairstyle so many times now
I don't know what I look like
You make me shiver, I feel so tender
We make a pretty good team
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving
You ought to get you some sleep
Burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks?
They won't help me survive
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace
The burning keeps me alive
Get your instructions
Follow directions--