Life Is a Minestrone

"Life Is a Minestrone"
Single by 10cc
from the album The Original Soundtrack
B-side"Channel Swimmer"
ReleasedMarch 1975
StudioStrawberry Studios, Stockport, Cheshire, England
Genre
Length4:08 (single version)
4:42 (album version)
LabelMercury
Songwriter(s)Eric Stewart
Lol Creme
Producer(s)10cc
10cc singles chronology
"Silly Love"
(1974) 		"Life Is a Minestrone"
(1975) 		"I'm Not in Love"
(1975)
Official Audio
"Life Is a Minestrone" on YouTube

"Life Is a Minestrone" is a 1975 song by 10cc released as a lead single from their third album, The Original Soundtrack.

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.[1]

Personnel

Adapted from the liner notes of The Original Soundtrack.[2]

Release

The song was released as the lead single from The Original Soundtrack as the band had reservations regarding the 6:00+ ballad "I'm Not in Love" being the lead single.[1] In the United States, "Life Is a Minestrone" was not released until after the release of "I'm Not in Love", so the band re-released the record over there in 1976 with "Lazy Ways" from the next 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.[3]

Reception

Commercial

The song charted at no. 7 on the UK Singles Chart,[4] no. 12 on the Netherlands Singles Chart,[5] and no. 7 on the Irish Singles Chart[6] in 1975; in 1976, it charted at no. 104 on the Billboard Hot 100.[3]

Critical

In his review for AllMusic, Dave Thompson calls 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 notes 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".[7]

References

  1. ^ a b "I Write The Songs". The10ccfanclub.com. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  2. ^ The Original Soundtrack (liner notes). 10cc. Mercury. 1975. 9102 500.{{cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) (link)
  3. ^ a b White, Chris (17 June 1997). The Very Best of 10cc (inlay). 10cc.
  4. ^ "10 CC | Artist". Official Charts. Archived from the original on 13 December 2014. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  5. ^ Steffen Hung. "dutchcharts.nl – Dutch charts portal". Archived from the original on 13 October 2012. Retrieved 12 March 2009.
  6. ^ Jaclyn Ward (1 October 1962). "The Irish Charts – All there is to know". Irishcharts.ie. Archived from the original on 26 January 2010. Retrieved 4 September 2011.
  7. ^ Song Review by Dave Thompson. "Life Is a Minestrone – 10cc | Listen, Appearances, Song Review". AllMusic. Retrieved 12 August 2014.