# Once in a Lifetime "Once in a Lifetime" is a 1980 Talking Heads song whose spoken-word chorus and Toni Basil-choreographed music video turned David Byrne's twitchy suit-and-tie preacher act into a template that YouTube edits, Tumblr posts and Muppet parodies still recycle decades later. ## Origin "Once in a Lifetime" was recorded for Talking Heads' fourth album Remain in Light, released on October 8th, 1980 and produced by Brian Eno[3]. The band built the track from an improvised studio jam called "Right Start," with Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth locking in the guitar and bass loop while Eno added the minimalist synth line and Byrne wrote the spoken-word lyric in the style of a televangelist sermon[3]. The song was pushed out as the album's lead single on February 2nd, 1981, alongside a low-budget music video co-directed by choreographer Toni Basil[1]. In the clip, Byrne performs jerky, ritualistic dance moves against alternating white voids, religious footage, computer-generated water ripples and four mirrored copies of himself[1]. MTV, then a brand-new channel, put the video into heavy rotation, which is what actually built the audience for a single that had only modest chart success[3]. - **Platform:** MTV (original video) / YouTube and Tumblr (viral edits) - **Creator:** Talking Heads (song); music video co-directed by Toni Basil and David Byrne - **Date:** 1980 ## Overview "Once in a Lifetime" is best known online for two things: David Byrne's karate-chopping, chroma-keyed dance in the 1981 music video[1], 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 futility[2]. 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 buying[3]. The meme side of the song mostly lives in edits of the video and the live Stop Making Sense performance[4]. 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 footage[5]. 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 film[3]. ## How to Use 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 video[1] or his big-suit dance from Stop Making Sense[4]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Once in a Lifetime? It's a 1980 Talking Heads song, released as a single with a Toni Basil-co-directed music video, that later became a long-running source of internet edits and image macros[1]. ### Where did Once in a Lifetime come from? It first appeared on the band's fourth album Remain in Light on October 8th, 1980, built from a studio jam called "Right Start" and produced by Brian Eno[3]. ### What does Once in a Lifetime mean? David Byrne wrote the spoken-word lyric in the style of a televangelist sermon about an everyman waking up inside a life he doesn't recognize, which is why lines like "how did I get here?" get quoted as captions[3]. ### How do you use Once in a Lifetime? People typically loop the "same as it ever was" chorus over repetitive footage, caption music-video stills with lyrics, or splice Byrne's isolated vocals from tracks like Ross Hudson's 2016 upload onto other clips[7]. ### Is Once in a Lifetime still popular? It's a classic reference rather than a current trend, kept alive by long-standing edits like swedemason's 2017 Trump video[8] and by the Stop Making Sense live version[4]. ## References 1. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHatn3_UxEU]() 2. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Once%20In%20A%20Lifetime]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/once-in-a-lifetime]() 4. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IsSpAOD6K8]() 5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGofoH9RDEA]() 6. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCY0aeUx-Ns]() 7. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlnmQbPGuls]() 8. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSuregWhlWk]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/once-in-a-lifetime Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library