The premise is disarmingly small: a family member loses their driver's licence, not through any fault or failing, but simply because the calendar caught up with them. It's the sort of quiet indignity most songwriters would consider too modest for a chorus. Byrne, to his credit, resists inflating it into grand tragedy. Instead he lets the bansuri — that reedy, breath-driven Indian flute, an instrument you'll rarely find within a mile of a pop single — do the emotional heavy lifting that a string section or a key change might otherwise be drafted in for. It curls around the guitar lines like smoke finding an open window, and it's this instrumental choice, more than any lyrical flourish, that gives the track its particular ache.

Sonically, "How Life Is" sits somewhere between the polished sentimentality of Coldplay at their least bombastic and the earthier, more wandering instincts of Peter Gabriel circa his world-music phase. The production leans acoustic without going full campfire, then folds in electronic textures with a light enough hand that they never announce themselves. It's a tightrope walk — too much gloss and you lose the intimacy of the subject matter; too little and the song risks sounding like a demo — and Byrne, mostly, keeps his footing. Where the track occasionally wobbles is in its middle section, where the arrangement thickens just enough to blur the vocal's clarity, a minor stumble in an otherwise sure-footed three minutes.

That vocal, incidentally, is the record's real asset. Byrne sings like a man who has learned that restraint carries further than volume — his phrasing has the unhurried, conversational quality of Cat Stevens on his gentler cuts, never straining for a note he hasn't earned. It's a voice built for exactly this kind of material: songs about the things we lose slowly, almost imperceptibly, rather than the ones that vanish all at once.

The '80s flavour Byrne's team have namechecked in the press notes is present but tasteful — a faint chorus-pedal shimmer here, a synth pad there — deployed as seasoning rather than costume. It roots the song in a lineage of adult-pop songwriting (think early Peter Gabriel solo records, or the more reflective corners of Sting's Blue Turtles era) without ever tipping into pastiche or nostalgia-bait.

Byrne isn't chasing an anthem here; he's chasing a feeling — the specific, quiet grief of watching someone you love hand over a piece of their independence. He captures it with more grace than the subject usually receives, and that alone is worth your three minutes.

**Verdict:** A tender, well-observed single that trusts a small story to carry real weight — recommended listening for anyone who still believes a pop song can sit with sadness rather than resolve it.