(Debuted September 6, 1986, Peaked #25, 20 Weeks on the chart)
The Talking Heads were one of those groups whose music is quite entrenched into 1980s culture, as well as its style. However, their songs aren't the big hits many would have expected. "Wild Wild Life" was their final hit, but it was only their third to reach the Top 40. Two of the band's more memorable hits -- "Once in a Lifetime" and "Road to Nowhere" -- didn't get into the Hot 100 during their initial chart runs (though the former scraped its way to #91 as a live track from Stop Making Sense).
By 1986, the band was beginning its breakup after more than a decade together. "Wild Wild Life" was taken from the "soundtrack" album from lead singer David Byrne's film True Stories. Only it wasn't really a soundtrack album at all. Instead of featuring the songs in the movie as sung by John Goodman (who appears in the video below), "Pops" Staples and others, they were performed by Byrne and his band as a condition of the financial backers of the film as a way of ensuring that some profit would arise.
Today, the song is probably better-remembered than the movie is.
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