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Welcome to hit parade a podcast of pop chart history from slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast.

I'm Chris Melanfee, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slates. Why is this song number one series on today's show?

44 years ago in the fall of 1979, a song that mixed funky rhythms with jittery lyrics about life during wartime made its debut on billboards hot 100.

The song claimed that things were too hard in the apocalyptic New York City of the 70s to have any fun. It wasn't a time to party, not a time for disco.

But the song was totally fun and quite danceable. And it name checked a couple of New York night spots, including the mud club and an infamous dive called CBGB.

The name of this band was talking heads and they were shouting out the venue that helped birth them, a CD bar in New York's East Village with a small stage and a foul bathroom.

A nightclub now widely regarded as the birthplace of punk rock, which was uncommercial for bitterly unapproachable music, right?

After all, life during wartime only reached number 80 on the pop chart. The rock that originated at CBGB wasn't supposed to be pop music, wasn't?

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