"Life During Wartime" is a song by New Wave

New Wave music

New Wave is a subgenre of :rock music that emerged in the mid to late 1970s alongside punk rock. The term at first generally was synonymous with punk rock before being considered a genre in its own right that incorporated aspects of electronic and experimental music, mod subculture, disco and 1960s...

 band Talking Heads

Talking Heads

Talking Heads were an American New Wave and avant-garde band formed in 1975 in New York City and active until 1991. The band comprised David Byrne, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison...

, released as the first single from their 1979 album Fear of Music

Fear of Music (album)

Fear of Music is the third studio album by American New Wave band Talking Heads, released on 3 August 1979 on Sire Records. It was recorded at locations in New York City between April and May 1979 and was produced by the quartet and Brian Eno. The album entered the Billboard 200 in the United...

in 1979. It peaked at #80 on the US Billboard Pop Singles Chart

Billboard Hot 100

The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...

.

The song is also performed in the 1983 film Stop Making Sense

Stop Making Sense

Stop Making Sense is a concert movie featuring Talking Heads live on stage. Directed by Jonathan Demme, it was shot over the course of three nights at Hollywood's Pantages Theater in December 1983, as the group was touring to promote their new album Speaking in Tongues. The movie is notable for...

, which depicts a Talking Heads concert. The performance of "Live During Wartime" featured in the film prominently features aerobic exercising

Aerobic exercise

Aerobic exercise is physical exercise of relatively low intensity that depends primarily on the aerobic energy-generating process. Aerobic literally means "living in air", and refers to the use of oxygen to adequately meet energy demands during exercise via aerobic metabolism...

 and jogging

Jogging

Jogging is a form of trotting or running at a slow or leisurely pace. The main intention is to increase fitness with less stress on the body than from faster running.-Definition:...

 by David Byrne and other background singers. The Stop Making Sense live version of the track is featured in the film's accompanying soundtrack album

Stop Making Sense (album)

Stop Making Sense is a live 1984 album by Talking Heads, the soundtrack to the film of the same name. The original release of the album features only nine of the songs from the movie, many of them heavily edited. The album spent over two years on the Billboard 200 chart...

, and was released as a single.

The song is included in The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.

Origin

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: "I wrote this in my loft on Seventh and Avenue A." And later, "I was thinking about Baader-Meinhof. Patty Hearst

Patty Hearst

Patricia Campbell Hearst , now known as Patricia Campbell Hearst Shaw, is an American newspaper heiress, socialite, actress, kidnap victim, and convicted bank robber....

. Tompkins Square. This a song about living in Alphabet City

Alphabet City, Manhattan

Alphabet City is a neighborhood located within the Lower East Side and East Village in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is also known as Loisaida, a Spanglish adaptation of 'Lower East Side'. Its name comes from Avenues A, B, C, and D, the only avenues in Manhattan to have single-letter...

."

Lyrics

Written about life in New York City during the late nineteen seventies, this song describes life in an impoverished metropolis. Byrne describes life in New York as a metaphor for WWII-era civilians and argues against the concept that life there is bohemian by saying, 'This ain't no party. This ain't no disco. This ain't no foolin' around.' The wartime imagery is taken further by images of having to stand away from windows for fear of being shot and people living on the street long beyond the thought of having food to eat.

Charts

Chart (1979)	Peak position
US Billboard Billboard (magazine) Billboard is a weekly American magazine devoted to the music industry, and is one of the oldest trade magazines in the world. It maintains several internationally recognized music charts that track the most popular songs and albums in various categories on a weekly basis... Hot 100 Billboard Hot 100 The Billboard Hot 100 is the United States music industry standard singles popularity chart issued weekly by Billboard magazine. Chart rankings are based on radio play and sales; the tracking-week for sales begins on Monday and ends on Sunday, while the radio play tracking-week runs from Wednesday...	80

Other versions

The song was covered and is used at live shows by Welsh indie alternative band, The Automatic

The Automatic

The Automatic , are a Welsh rock band. The band is composed of Robin Hawkins on vocals, bass and synthesizers, James Frost on guitar, synthesizers, backing vocals and occasional bass, Iwan Griffiths on drums and Paul Mullen on vocals, guitar and synthesizer - since 2007...

. The song is occasionally played in concert by American jam band

Jam band

-Ambiguity:By the late 1990s use of the term jam band also became ambiguous. An editorial at jamband.com suggested that any band of which a primary band such as Phish has done a cover of be included as jam band. The example was including New York post-punk band Talking Heads after Phish performed...

 Widespread Panic

Widespread Panic

Widespread Panic is an American rock band from Athens, Georgia. The current lineup includes guitarist/singer John Bell, bassist Dave Schools, drummer Todd Nance, percussionist Domingo "Sunny" Ortiz, keyboardist John "JoJo" Hermann, and guitarist Jimmy Herring...

.