Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)

The first track on Remain in Light, recorded in July and August 1980, with lyrics by Byrne and Eno and music by the band and Eno. Frantz said it was the first time they had ever composed music in the studio while recording it. Eno took the title from a New York Post headline he read that summer, and Byrne reworked the title of Don't Worry About the Government, from Talking Heads: 77, into a lyric about a government man, drawing on preaching, shouting and ranting. The guitar solo, often credited to Adrian Belew, was Byrne's, pieced together with a Lexicon Prime Time delay and speed-changed playback.

The band never explained the song. AllMusic's Bill Janovitz heard an alienated, lost soul filtered through delusion and paranoia. It is in The Pitchfork 500, and Royksopp opened their 2007 Back to Mine mix with it.

Live

It belonged to the big-band tour of 1980 to 1981: 51 performances from the Heatwave festival at Mosport Park, Ontario, on 23 August 1980 to Tokyo's Nippon Seinenkan on 28 February 1981, after which it was dropped. Belew played the solo on stage. An 8:24 version from Tokyo was added to the 2004 edition of The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads, and the song is in the RAI film Live in Rome. Byrne has played it more than 400 times solo, including in American Utopia, and Harrison and Belew have played it on their Remain in Light tours.

Phish opened their Halloween 1996 Remain in Light set with it in Atlanta, and Angelique Kidjo began her song-for-song Remain in Light (2018) with it, starting a cappella. The upload in the hypersongs web is the album track, in its 2005 remaster.