The Quitter’s Playlist: “Once in a Lifetime” by Talking Heads (and Pomplamoose)

Recorded in 1980 and released as the first single from the album Remain in Light, “Once in a Lifetime” is the product of the band trying “and failing” to do funk, and instead coming up with something else entirely: something tribal, mystical, spiritual, trancelike. David Byrne delivers his vocals(?) like a preacher’s sermon, oblique words about “finding yourself” behind the wheel of a large automobile, or with a beautiful wife, and wondering how you got here, or whether it’s actually yours. Lines in the chorus lament “letting the days go by,” as well as some enigmatic stuff about water, which may or may not be holding you down, or underground, followed by a chant of “Same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was.” The song itself defies description — as great music should — in composition, execution, and meaning. It’s the song that shouldn’t be, but has permeated radio airwaves for forty-five years.

With its inscrutable lyrics about material possessions, accomplishments, status symbols, self-doubt, purpose in life, the passage of time, and whatever else — long on observation, short on specific meaning — “Once in a Lifetime” has been the soundtrack to many an existential crisis over the years. So it was for me, more than one year before I left my job. In early 2024 we were notified that after four years of freeform “work from home” being the status quo, my employer was calling all employees back to the office three days per week. In the interim, I had moved to the suburbs (a “mere” 55-minute train ride from the city) but I could have been living on top of the office itself and had sour feelings about the move, that something that had worked very well for a lot of people was being somewhat arbitrarily ended.

It was actually not Talking Heads’ original recording that sent me into my feelings, but a cover by Pomplamoose, whose “videosong” renditions of current pop and classic hits were a revelatory fave of mine in the early days of YouTube. Their take is appropriately icy to start, with subdued instrumentation in contrast to Jack Conte pushing the “preacher” role to new manic extremes. By the climax, Nataly Dawn’s delivery of the mantra “same as it ever was, same as it ever was” sends the song soaring, and then spiraling down deep into the listener’s soul, leaving you wondering why it must always be so, whether you’re reaching your “once in a lifetime” and where is that large automobile after all?

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