Released October 1965 (1965-10) Recorded 1965 Length 3:09 | Format 7" 45 RPM Genre Rock | |
B-side "I'm Going to Change the World" | ||
"It's My Life" is a song written by Brill Building songwriters Roger Atkins and Carl D'Errico. The song was originally performed by English R&B band The Animals, who released it as a single in October 1965 (see 1965 in music).
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The song became a hit in several different countries and has since been recorded by multiple artists.
Animals original
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, but had only found minor success at best.
"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".). It would become D'Errico and Atkins' best-known work.
The Animals' recording was propelled by a bass guitar riff from Chas Chandler, soon joined by an electric twelve-string guitar riff from Hilton Valentine; in the view of musicologist Walter Everett, the doubled line gave the song its strength. Dave Rowberry (Alan Price's replacement) on organ gave the record the sound that distinguished the Animals from other "British Invasion" groups, differing from Dave Clark Five's Mike Smith's through its darker timbre. Music writer Dave Marsh compared the dual part to a rock version of pointillism. Then lead singer Eric Burdon's low-pitched, gruff vocal entered with lyrics that author James E. Perrone thought rhetorically matched Burdon's origins from Tyneside in the working class North East England:
It's a hard world to get a break in All the good things have been taken But girl there are ways to make certain things pay Though I'm dressed in these rags I'll wear sable some dayThe song then built up to a musical climax in the chorus, with Burdon complemented by response vocals from Chandler and keyboardist Dave Rowberry:
But baby! (Baby!) Remember! (Remember!) It's my life and I'll do what I want It's my mind and I'll think what I want"It's My Life" was visually premiered on the US television show Hullabaloo in autumn 1965, where 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.
In Marsh's view, "It's My Life" was one of a wave of songs in 1965, by artists such as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Bob Dylan, that ushered in a new role for rock music as a vehicle for common perception and as a force for social consciousness. Writer Craig Werner sees the song as reflecting the desire on the part of both the Animals and their audience to define themselves apart from the community they came from. Writer Dave Thompson includes the song in his book 1000 Songs that Rock Your World, saying simply, "There is no angrier declaration of independence than this."
Covers
During the mid-1970s Bruce Springsteen began performing "It's My Life" during his Born to Run tours. It was preceded by the first iteration of Springsteen's spoken narratives – characterized by music writer Robert Hilburn as "painfully intense" – about how he and his father never got along about anything (that would later manifest themselves in introductions to Springsteen's own songs "Independence Day" and "The River"). The tempo of the song itself was greatly slowed down, to the point where it bore little obvious resemblance to the Animals' original, and renditions could easily run over ten minutes overall in duration; lyrics were varied somewhat across almost every performance. A live version of Springsteen's version was released in early 2015 as part of his 'Archives' series.
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. It attracted album oriented rock airplay and considerable MTV video play at the time.
In 1986 American hard rock band Alcatrazz recorded the song on their last studio album Dangerous Games. It failed to chart.
In 1989, the New York hardcore band Madball released a freely inspired, one-minute-long rendition of this song, which became one of their anthems. It can be found in their debut EP Ball of Destruction and album Droppin' Many Suckers.
In 1992, Bon Jovi performed their own Animals medley for an MTV show later released on video as Keep the Faith: An Evening with Bon Jovi; they led off with "It's My Life". In 1995, they performed the medley live with Eric Burdon. (Bon Jovi's 2000 hit "It's My Life" is a different song.)
In 1997, during a scene in Central Park in Disney's Jungle 2 Jungle, Tim Allen and Sam Huntington dance to a version sung by Dana Hutson of the group, Pele Juju.
Burdon performed the song live with Roseanne Barr on her The Roseanne Show in 2000.