"Life" is a song by Canadian rock group Our Lady Peace. It was released in December 2000 as the second single from their fourth studio album, ''

Spiritual Machines ''Spiritual Machines'' is the fourth studio album by the Canadian alternative rock band Our Lady Peace, released by Columbia Records in December 2000. Although not initially intended, the project evolved into a conceptual interpretation of futur ...

'' and the most successful from that album. The song was nominated for "Best Single" at the

2002 Juno Awards The Juno Awards of 2002 were presented in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada during the weekend of 13–14 April 2002. Nominations were announced 11 February 2002 at a news conference hosted by Mike Bullard. Awards for the secondary ...

, losing to Nickelback's " How You Remind Me". A

Sample Sample or samples may refer to: Base meaning * Sample (statistics), a subset of a population – complete data set * Sample (signal), a digital discrete sample of a continuous analog signal * Sample (material), a specimen or small quantity of s ...

can be heard in both the Trailer Park Boys: The Movie and in the episode "Say Goodnight to the Bad Guys" in the

Trailer Park Boys ''Trailer Park Boys'' is a Canadian mockumentary sitcom television series created by Mike Clattenburg that began airing in 2001 as a continuation of his 1999 film bearing the same name. The show follows the misadventures of a group of trailer pa ...

Background

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 ''A Decade'' is Canadian alternative rock band Our Lady Peace's first compilation album, released on November 21, 2006, in Canada, and November 28, 2006, in the United States. In addition to songs from the band's first six albums, the set inclu ...

'', 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.

Content

In a 2001 interview in ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertise ...

'', 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."

Music videos

The first video for "Life", shot at

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

's Mirabel Airport, was never released due to the band's creative differences with the director.OLP Bandology
at OurLadyPeace.ccChatroom (2001)

Yahoo.com at the Internet Archive. Retrieved September 19, 2009 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 Much (an abbreviation for its full name MuchMusic) is a Canadian English language specialty channel owned by BCE Inc. through its Bell Media subsidiary that airs programming aimed at teenagers and young adults. MuchMusic launched on August 31 ...

on April 5, 2001, and hit number-one on the Muchmusic Countdown on August 3 of that year. 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 "courage" appears to be painted on the side of Raine Maida's head which is then repeated at the end of both videos. The music video received two nominations for "Best Post-Production" and "Best Cinematography" at the 2001 MuchMusic Video Awards.Billboard - September 8, 2001, Page 84

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

Chart performance

Year-end charts

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Life (Our Lady Peace Song) 2000 singles Music videos directed by Marcos Siega Our Lady Peace songs Songs written by Raine Maida 2000 songs Columbia Records singles