Music
Song of the Day-June 20th
Talking heads-Life During Wartime
Album: Fear of Music
B-Side: “Electric Guitar”
Peak chart position: #80 Billboard Hot 100
Release date: September 1979
If there’s a song that captures the zeitgeist of the past 12–18 months better than “Life During Wartime,” I don’t know what it is. Lead singer David Byrne loosely based the lyrics on his experience living in the Alphabet City area of Manhattan, but they capture 2020’s dull ache of anxiety perfectly.
During an interview with NME near the record’s release, Byrne shared what would turn out to be a shockingly accurate vision of the future:
“There will be chronic food shortages and gas shortages and people will live in hovels. Paradoxically, they’ll be surrounded by computers the size of wrist watches. Calculators will be cheap. It’ll be as easy to hookup your computer with a central television bank as it is to get the week’s groceries.”
In many ways, the words he wrote describe a dystopia that’s now arrived.
Fast forward 42ish years and the song feels like an appropriate theme for the past year and a half. The beginning of 2020 saw empty streets. Eerily empty public spaces gave the world a…
