Listening to it helps me just "escape" my cares for a few minutes and just enjoy the strangeness of life.Īs for that iconic hand-chopping movement: I believe it's featured in the video in the background where there are some natives performing a ritualistic dance as the lead singer mimics their hand movements. Bruce from San Jose, CaSuch a frenetic, schizoid, mapcap song.But, Song Facts where the hell is "Take me to the river"? The TH's version is only one of the best cover versions by anyone, ever. Chris from SomewhereSame as it ever was.The crazy video und the sound were pioneering work for 1980 When it was released in 1980 nobody understood the relevance of this songīut years later their album REMAIN IN LIGHT and this song are considered masterpieces But they actually include a Hindi woman's arm in the video so we know that's deliberate. the serving style of hot dog stand where they were in college). Of course there could be other motivations the band had for including that (i.e. It is a religious gesture, ritualistic (the Catholic Rosary bead movement comes to mind when trying to compare it to something, or the Sign of the Cross). Mark from GeorgiaIn the video, that hand slicing movement is a gesture often seen by Indian women who are Hindi.Joe from Grand Haven, MiDavid Byrne is living proof that white guys can bust a move!."I listen to it like once a month because everything about it is so perfect." "That song can't be touched," he said in a Songfacts interview. Glen Ballard, who produced and co-wrote hits for Alanis Morissette, Dave Matthews and Aerosmith. Byrne's mesmeric and intense physical performance in the video to this track still compels today, and compliments and reflects the music it is interpreting." Nick Feldman of Wang Chung, who loves the "almost randomly cacophonous keyboard burblings, the wonderful bass line and rhythm section groove and David Byrne's slightly preacher-like vocals." He told Songfacts: "When my personal life started to unravel many years later, the lyrics to this song still resonated for me. "The first time I heard it, my mind was blown," she told NME. Here are three:Ĭharlotte Church, who named it the first song she fell in love with. None of the band members appear in it.Ī surprising number of musicians cite "Once In A Lifetime" as one of the best songs ever recorded. We were all on our own."īasil also directed and choreographed the video for the Remain In Light track " Crosseyed And Painless," which features dancers from a crew called The Electric Boogaloos. There was no paranoid A&R guy, no crazy dresser that would come in and decide what people should be wearing, and put them in shoes that they can't walk in, everybody with their own agenda. And then he took the ideas, and he 'physicalized' the ideas from these documentary-style films."īasil adds: "When I was making videos - whether it was with Devo, David Byrne, or whoever - there wasn't record companies breathing down anybody's neck, telling them what to do, what the video should look like. So we went over to UCLA and USC, and we viewed a lot of footage of documentaries on that subject. He wanted to research people in trances - different trances in church and different trances with snakes. They come to movement in another way, not as a trained dancer. This stalled at #103 in February 1981, but when MTV launched that August, they played the video a lot, giving the song much more exposure.ĭavid Byrne's choreography in the video was done by the Toni Basil, who had a hit as a singer with " Mickey." It was a very odd video, and for many viewers it was the first look they got at the Talking Heads (or at least Byrne - the full band didn't appear in a video until " Burning Down the House" two years later).Īs you watch David Byrne spasm like a malfunctioning robot interspersed with gesturing in Martian sign language, ponder this excerpt from the book MTV Ruled the World - The Early Years of Music Video, in which Toni Basil fills in some details about the choreography for this video: "He wanted to research movement, but he wanted to research movement more as an actor, as does David Bowie, as does Mick Jagger.
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