Life During Wartime

Well, this was a very popular song among us volunteers when we were fighting in the Bosnian war (I had a CD Walkman and a TH CD, mp3 players not having been invented yet), it very much reflected what "life during wartime" is really like. But war can also be a metaphor for daily life, and the song could say that, too, with the line "We dress like students, we dress like housewives, or in a suit and a tie", so it could be about the struggle of normal existence.

To me this is a post-modern discription of life after the fall.

I think the idea that this is all talking about a band is really interesting, but I never really interpreted it that way.

As a few others have said, this is literally stuff that occurs during wartime. People stock up on supplies, get paranoid, lose their identities, and don't have time for simple pleasures or day-to-day activities. The song paints a visual of war being everywhere and we're all desperately (and unsuccessfully) attempting to relocate in order to escape it.

I see it as describing the generally paranoid mood of the US in the early 80's, what with the Cold War, post-Watergate mistrust of the government, etc.

I don't see it as being about touring specifically since he specifically has the lines about this ain't no CBGB's - to me, he's saying all that music stuff isn't as important as escaping the gunfire etc, and so is a criticism of the new wave scene for being irrelevant.

the wikipedia on this ... 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. Tompkins Square. This a song about living in Alphabet City." But I still agree with malachiconstant , Byrne is way too self-centered to sing about something like

"The song's lyrics tell of a civil insurrection in the USA (the cities Houston, Detroit and Pittsburgh are mentioned by name)" .....as mentioned earlier in the article.

The only line that I trip over is "We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, I know that ain't allowed" Where would he do that on tour?

I think it's about... life during wartime! Imagine that!

This song is actually about life as a struggling musician on tour. The life of a travelling musician relating this to being a war. Making money, and getting gigs is part of the war.

Talking about lack of food ("I got some groceries, some peanut butter, to last a couple of days"), and talking about the uselessness of a degree or education as a musician ("burned all my notebooks, what good are notebooks? they won't help me survive)

But he talks about other cities, as if he were about to travel there. All of the cities being American cities, "Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?", yet he talks about the places that they are familiar with like the CBGB's and the Muddclub.

It's about being a struggling band, concentrating on making a living on the road.

Byrne said it was just a bunch of different things that people would say/do during an urban war.

Although I'm sure it has a bit to do with the band analogy.

Classic Talking Heads satire, the song captures the pessimism of America in 1979: Jimmy Carter struggling to put the nation back together again after Nixon's resignation and pardon, Vietnam still not healed under the bandage slapped on it half-a$$ed by Ford, stagflation, lingering paranoia of Communist infiltration and fear of nuclear Armageddon as the Cold War began to wind down. Inspired by the social decay prevalent in Alphabet City, where Byrne lived at the time, the song describes a dark fantasy of America in the worst-case post-apocalyptic scenario haunting the public imagination as the USA limped out of the '70s.

What's kind of frightening about this song is that it's close to how a lot of people are feeling nowadays, with NSA surveillance and similar issues very prevalent in everyday life. The idea that people might want to get vans, loaded with weapons, meeting out by deserted gravesites, staying away from windows...it's creepy.