Life Is a Minestrone
1975 single by 10cc
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"Life Is a Minestrone" is a 1975 song by the English rock band 10cc, released as the lead single from their third studio album, The Original Soundtrack.
| "Life Is a Minestrone" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Single by 10cc | ||||
| from the album The Original Soundtrack | ||||
| B-side | "Channel Swimmer" | |||
| Released | 28 March 1975[1] | |||
| Studio | Strawberry Studios (Stockport, Greater Manchester, England) | |||
| Genre | Pop[2] | |||
| Length |
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| Label | Mercury | |||
| Songwriters | ||||
| Producer | 10cc | |||
| 10cc singles chronology | ||||
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| Official Audio | ||||
| "Life Is a Minestrone" on YouTube | ||||
Background
The track was written after Lol Creme and Eric Stewart were driving home from Strawberry Studios and a BBC Radio presenter said something that they only partly heard, but which Creme interpreted as "life is a minestrone". Stewart and Creme believed the phrase to be a good title for a song on the grounds that life is, according to Stewart in a BBC Radio Wales interview, "a mixture of everything we pile in there". They had the song written in a day.[3]
Personnel
Adapted from the liner notes of The Original Soundtrack.[4]
10cc
- Lol Creme – vocals, piano, percussion, electric guitar
- Kevin Godley – drums, timbales, percussion, backing vocals
- Eric Stewart – electric guitar, backing vocals
- Graham Gouldman – bass, additional guitars, backing vocals
Release
The song was released as the lead single from The Original Soundtrack, as the band had reservations regarding the over-six-minute ballad "I'm Not in Love" being the lead.[3] In the United States, "Life Is a Minestrone" was not issued until after the release of "I'm Not in Love", so the band re-issued the record there in 1976 with "Lazy Ways" from their next studio album, How Dare You!, as its B-side.
The B-side "Channel Swimmer" appears as a bonus track on the later CD release of The Original Soundtrack.[5]
Reception
Commercial
The song charted at No. 7 on the UK singles chart,[6] No. 12 on the Dutch Top 40,[7] and No. 7 on the Irish Singles Chart[8] in 1975. In 1976, it charted at No. 104 on the Billboard Hot 100.[5]
Critical
In his review for AllMusic, Dave Thompson called the song "utterly daft, wholly compulsive" and a "deadly accurate barrage of disconnected theories, thoughts and ghastly geographical puns, all tied together by that bizarre nomenclatural observation and a fadeout which is pure Paul McCartney". He noted that "reducing the human condition to the contents of a well-stacked pantry, composers Lol Creme and Eric Stewart combine for a truly joyous slice of pop nonsense, and one of 10cc's most effervescent hit singles".[9]