Once in a Lifetime

"Once in a Lifetime" is best known online for two things: David Byrne's karate-chopping, chroma-keyed dance in the 1981 music video1, and the repeated chorus line "same as it ever was," which internet users pull as a caption, an audio loop or a punchline about repetition and futility2. The song itself blends Afrobeat rhythms, a Philip Glass-style synth part from Brian Eno, and Byrne's televangelist-inspired spoken sermon about waking up in a house you don't remember buying3.

The meme side of the song mostly lives in edits of the video and the live Stop Making Sense performance4. Common formats include isolated-vocals uploads that let people mash Byrne's voice onto other footage, extended "insane edition" loops of the "same as it ever was" hook, and image macros pairing lyrics with pie charts, screenshots or political footage5. The oversized white suit Byrne wears in Stop Making Sense also gets pulled in as visual shorthand, even though he actually wears it during a different song in the film3.

Most "Once in a Lifetime" memes lean on one of three moves: caption a shot from the music video with a lyric like "You may ask yourself, how did I get here?", loop the "same as it ever was" line under footage of something repetitive or doomed, or splice Byrne's isolated vocals over an unrelated clip. Video editors typically time the cuts to Byrne's stiff-armed karate chop from the 1981 video1 or his big-suit dance from Stop Making Sense4.