Life (Our Lady Peace song)
| "Life" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| File:Our Lady Peace - Life.jpg | ||||
| Single by Our Lady Peace | ||||
| from the album Spiritual Machines |
||||
| Released | December 20, 2000[1] | |||
| Recorded | September - November 2000 | |||
| Genre | Alternative rock, post-grunge | |||
| Length | 4:23 (Spiritual Machines) 4:44(A Decade) |
|||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Writer(s) | Raine Maida | |||
| Producer(s) | Arnold Lanni & Raine Maida | |||
| Our Lady Peace singles chronology | ||||
|
||||
"Life" is a song by Canadian rock group Our Lady Peace. It was the second single released from their fourth studio album, Spiritual Machines and the most successful from that album. The song was nominated for "Best Single" at the 2002 Juno Awards, losing to Nickelback's "How You Remind Me".
Contents
Song information
This song like the rest on the album, was partially inspired by Ray Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines. While directly following the track "In Repair" on the studio album, on the band's 2006 compilation album, A Decade, the track is immediately preceded by a spoken excerpt by Ray Kurzweil titled "R.K. Jack" that was recorded during the Spiritual Machines sessions and previously unreleased.
Kurzweil narration (R.K. Jack)
<templatestyles src="Template:Blockquote/styles.css" />
We lost Jack somewhere along the line? Jack's friends think not. Jack claims to be the same old guy just newer. His vision, memory and reasoning ability have all been improved but it's still Jack.
The band has performed "Life" live on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn.[1] The song can also be briefly heard in Trailer Park Boys: The Movie in which J-Roc remixes the "do do do" part with his own rap.
Lyrics
In a 2001 interview in Billboard, Maida said of the lyrics for "Life": "That song to me was such a simple premise. It's really about positive energy. Everybody deals with simple things that get people down, like money problems. You just have to deal with stuff and turn any negative energy into positive energy. That's the way to get through life."[2]
Music videos
The first video for "Life", shot at Montreal's Mirabel Airport in January 2001, was never released due to the band's creative differences with the director.[1][3]
Two versions of the Marcos Siega directed music video for "Life" were released, one in the United States and the other for Canada. The Canadian version premiered on Muchmusic on April 5, 2001 and hit #1 on the Muchmusic Countdown on August 3 of that year.[1] It is the original and features the band playing in an all white room. Various scenes with distressed people are shown throughout the video. In the American version, released on April 20, 2001, the scenes with the people are cut out. Both videos begin with the Chinese representation of "Our Lady Peace" and the Chinese symbol for life. The Chinese symbol for "breathe" appears to be painted on the side of Raine Maida's head which is then repeated at the end of both videos.
Track listing
US Promo CD
Columbia CSK 16436
- "(Album Version)" - 4:23
Australian CD Single
Epic EPK 6718742
- "Life" - 4:23
- "Is Anybody Home?"
- "Clumsy (Live & Unreleased)" - 4:25
- "Car Crash (Live & Unreleased)" - 5:52
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 OLP Bandology at OurLadyPeace.cc
- ↑ Pesselnick, Jill "The Modern Age" - Billboard 10 Mar. 2001. Retrieved December 15, 2009 (Google Book View)
- ↑ Chatroom (2001). "Yahoo Chat Event - Our Lady Peace and "Spiritual Machines", Monday, April 30th, 2001" Yahoo.com at the Internet Archive. Retrieved September 19, 2009
