“Life During Wartime” by Talking Heads

"Life During Wartime" was the first single off Fear of Music, Talking Heads' third album, and it's the sound of the dance floor bracing for the apocalypse. Sire put it out in October 1979, and the full single title, "Life During Wartime (This Ain't No Party... This Ain't No Disco... This Ain't No Foolin' Around)", ranks among the longest ever printed on a sleeve.

David Byrne sings it like a man giving a panicked status report from somewhere things have gone badly wrong, while Tina Weymouth's bass and Chris Frantz's drums lock into a taut, nervous funk and Jerry Harrison's synthesizer flickers around the edges. Ari Up and Gene Wilder turn up on congas. All four band members share the writing credit, and Brian Eno produced it with the band, keeping everything jittery and airtight.

It barely scraped the Billboard pop chart, peaking at No. 80, but it found a second life in the concert film Stop Making Sense, where Byrne and the backing singers jog and do aerobics on stage while the band pounds away. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame later named it one of its 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.