"Once in a Lifetime" is a song by the American new wave band Talking Heads, produced and cowritten by Brian Eno. It was released in November 1980 as the lead single from Talking Heads' fourth studio album, Remain in Light (1980), through Sire Records.
Eno and Talking Heads developed "Once in a Lifetime" through extensive jams, inspired by Afrobeat musicians such as Fela Kuti. David Byrne's vocals were inspired by preachers delivering sermons, with lyrics addressing existential crisis and the unconscious. The music video, directed by Byrne and Toni Basil, has Byrne dancing erratically over footage of religious rituals.
"Once in a Lifetime" was certified gold in the UK in 2021. A live version, taken from the 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense, charted in 1986 on the Billboard Hot 100. NPR named "Once in a Lifetime" one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame lists it as one of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll", and Rolling Stone ranked it at number 27 on its 2021 list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The music video has been named among the greatest by several publications.
Like other songs on Remain in Light, Talking Heads and producer Brian Eno developed "Once in a Lifetime" by recording jams, isolating the best parts, and learning to play them repetitively. Songwriter Robert Palmer joined the jam on guitar and percussion. The technique was influenced by early hip hop and the Afrobeat music of artists such as Fela Kuti, which Eno had introduced to the band. Singer David Byrne likened the process to modern looping and sampling, describing the band as "human samplers". He said the song was a result of the band trying and failing to play funk, inadvertently creating something new instead.
The track was initially not one of Eno's favorites, and the band almost abandoned it. According to keyboardist Jerry Harrison, "Because there were so few chord changes, and everything was in a sort of trance ... it became harder to write defined choruses." However, Byrne had faith in the song and felt he could write lyrics to it. Eno developed the chorus melody by singing wordlessly, and the song "fell into place". Harrison developed the "bubbly" synthesizer line and added the Hammond organ climax, taken from the Velvet Underground's "What Goes On".
Eno interpreted the rhythm differently from the band, with the third beat of the bar as the first. He encouraged the band members to interpret the beat in different ways, thereby exaggerating different rhythmic elements. According to Eno, "This means the song has a funny balance, with two centers of gravity – their funk groove, and my dubby, reggae-ish understanding of it; a bit like the way Fela Kuti songs will have multiple rhythms going on at the same time, warping in and out of each other."
According to bassist Tina Weymouth, her husband, drummer Chris Frantz, created the bassline by yelling during a jam, which she mimicked on bass guitar. She wanted to "leave lots of space for the cacophony that surrounded me. I felt like I was pounding away like a carpenter, just nailing away to get it in the groove." Eno removed the bass note from the first beat of the bar, as he felt it was too "obvious", and rerecorded the part. When Talking Heads returned to New York and Eno had gone home, the engineer had Weymouth record the bassline again. She said: "It wasn't a big fight between me and Brian, as it has sometimes been portrayed, it was just a musical dispute."
In February 1981 "Once in a Lifetime" reached no. 24 on the Dutch Top 40 and in March peaked at no. 14 on the UK Singles Chart. In the UK it was certified silver in January 2018 and gold in April 2021. A live version, taken from the 1984 concert film Stop Making Sense, reached number 91 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in 1986.
In 1996, Kermit the Frog performed "Once in a Lifetime" on Muppets Tonight while wearing Byrne's "big suit" and mimicking his dances from Stop Making Sense. In 2000, NPR named "Once in a Lifetime" one of the 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. In 2016, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed it as one of the "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll", and Malcolm Jack wrote in The Guardian that the song "is a thing of dizzying power, beauty and mystery [...] it sounds like nothing else in the history of pop."
In 2018, the musician Travis Morrison appeared on NPR's All Songs Considered, where he selected "Once in a Lifetime" as a "perfect song" and said: "The lyrics are astounding; they are meaningless and totally meaningful at the same time. That's as good as rock lyrics get." In 2021, Rolling Stone ranked "Once in a Lifetime" number 27 on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time".
In 1989, Spin readers voted the "Once in a Lifetime" video the sixth-best of the 1980s. In 2003, the BBC critic Chris Jones described the "Once in a Lifetime" video as "hilarious" and "as compelling as it was in 1981".
