I recently came across this album over at Flat Black & Circular, and have been jamming out to it all week. David Byrne and Brian Eno—what a combo! The two recorded an album back in ’81 and reunited in 2008 to create this beauty.
“Life is Long” is a total jam. Every single time I hear it I end up pulling out my best dad moves (usually the classic “lean and snap”). The melody is simple, and the lyrics are too—but they’re so hopeful and uplifting in that paradoxically subdued way that only David Byrne and Brian Eno can produce. Right off the bat, Byrne and Eno acknowledge that life is hard (“Everybody says that the living is easy…”), sometimes it sucks, and most of us have no idea what we’re doing, but they remind us to remain unafraid (“I’m lost, but I’m not afraid”): to embrace the unknown because, after all, that’s the beauty of this whole shebang.
The song is sure to tame minor existential crises, at least for three minutes and forty-six seconds.
