Once in a Lifetime

The Talking Heads song “Once in a Lifetime” is resonating with me on a lot of levels right now. David Byrne gave an exhilarating performance of it on Saturday Night Live at the end of February… just before the world plummeted into our current, locked down reality. It has a theme of looking at your life and not recognizing it – something I think we can relate to at the moment. And certainly, what we are going through now is a once in a lifetime experience.

After seeing the SNL performance as a rerun last weekend, I brought it up it up in a speaker coaching. I spend a lot of time talking with people about the power of the pause. Listeners need a beat to digest the information they hear. Speakers need to breathe. Without pauses speakers sound rushed which signals panic and lack of confidence.

We tend to think of pauses as slowing things down, but this song is a great example of how a pause can pull a listener forward. In the verse, each phrase is a kind of cliffhanger. What’s next? Where is this going? I read somewhere that David Byrne wrote and delivered it this way to imitate the dramatic style of a southern revival preacher. 

The Feb 29th SNL performance, adapted from Byrne’s Broadway show, American Utopia, is no longer on YouTube, but you can find it if you dig around online a bit. It’s well worth watching. The original Talking Heads recording is linked here. [Sound on!]

As we adjust to social distancing, I am continuing to coach speakers remotely. Contact me to schedule a session.