| "It's My Life" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
Single Cover. |
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| Single by The Animals | ||||
| B-side | "I'm Going to Change the World" | |||
| Released | October 1965[1] | |||
| Format | 7" 45 RPM | |||
| Recorded | 1965 | |||
| Genre | Rock | |||
| Length | 3:09 | |||
| Label | Columbia | |||
| Writer(s) | Roger Atkins, Carl D'Errico | |||
| Producer | Mickie Most[1] | |||
| The Animals singles chronology | ||||
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"It's My Life" is a song written by Brill Building songwriters Roger Atkins and Carl D'Errico. The song was originally performed by British rock band the Animals, who released it as a single in October 1965 (see 1965 in music)[1] and was one of three songs that the Animals recorded by Brill Building songwriters.
The song became a hit in several different countries and has since been recorded by multiple artists, including Bruce Springsteen.
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D'Errico, who wrote the music, and Atkins, who wrote the lyrics, were professional songwriters associated with the greater Brill Building scene in New York City. By 1965 they were working for Screen Gems Music.[2]
"It's My Life" was written specifically for The Animals as their producer Mickie Most was soliciting material for the group's next recording sessions. (Other Animals hits to come out of this Brill Building call were "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" and "Don't Bring Me Down".[2])
As laid down "It's My Life" was a natural fit for The Animals. It was propelled by a bass guitar riff from Chas Chandler, soon joined by a ringing electric twelve-string guitar riff from Hilton Valentine. Then lead singer Eric Burdon's classic low growl entered with lyrics seemingly direct from his native working class Northern England:
The song then built up to a climax in the chorus, with Burdon complemented by response vocals from Chandler and keyboardist Dave Rowberry. By the second verse, the song's themes of class-based misanthropic rebellion have grown even stronger:
"It's My Life" was visually premiered on the U.S. television show Hullabaloo in fall 1965, where in true mixed-up 1960s fashion the group sang live vocals against canned music on a den-type set that featured attractive young women sticking their heads through holes in the wall, where normally animal heads would be mounted.
| Chart (1965) | Peak position |
|---|---|
| Canadian Singles Chart[3] | 2 |
| Norway (VG-lista)[4] | 5 |
| UK Singles (The Official Charts Company)[5] | 7 |
| US Billboard Hot 100[6] | 23 |
During the mid-1970s Bruce Springsteen began performing "It's My Life" during his Born to Run tours. Preceded by the first iteration of Springsteen's archetypical spoken narrative about how he and his father never got along about anything, the tempo of the song itself was greatly slowed down to further bring out the tense themes; renditions could easily run over ten minutes overall in duration, and lyrics were varied somewhat across almost every performance. Never released in any live album or box set collection, Springsteen's take on the song has become part of his concert lore and fans' bootleg collections.
The song next cropped up as the closing part of ex-New York Dolls singer David Johansen's Animals medley from his 1982 live album Live It Up. Here done following "We Gotta Get Out of This Place" and "Don't Bring Me Down" in an appreciative rendition faithful to The Animals' arrangement and Burdon's vocal, it attracted album oriented rock airplay and considerable MTV video play at the time.
Later on, in 1986 American hard rock band Alcatrazz recorded the song on their last studio album Dangerous Games. It failed to chart.
In 1992, Bon Jovi performed its own Animals medley for an MTV show later released on video as Keep the Faith - An Evening with Bon Jovi. "It's My Life" led off with an impassioned performance featuring octave jumps from singer Jon Bon Jovi, which then flowed into "We Gotta Get Out of This Place". In 1995, they performed the medley live with Eric Burdon.
Burdon performed the song live with Roseanne Barr on her The Roseanne Show in 2000.
Much of the assertive spirit of the song resurfaced later in two completely different hit songs that shared the same title: Talk Talk's "It's My Life" (1984), later redone as an even bigger hit by No Doubt (2003), and Bon Jovi with their own "It's My Life" (2000).