Life Is a Minestrone

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

"Life Is a Minestrone"
Single by 10cc
from the album Sheet Music
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)

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]

Release

The song was released as the lead single from The Original Soundtrack on the grounds that the band had reservations regarding the 6:00+ ballad "I'm Not in Love" as the lead single.[1] In America, "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 b-side.

The b-side "Channel Swimmer" appears as a bonus track on the later CD release of The Original Soundtrack.[2]

Reception

Commercial

The song charted at No. 7 on the UK Singles Chart,[3] No. 12 on the Netherlands Singles Chart,[4] and No. 7 on the Irish Singles Chart,[5] in 1975 and No. 104 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976.[2]

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".[6]

References
  1. "I Write The Songs". The10ccfanclub.com. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  2. White, Chris (17 June 1997). The Very Best of 10cc (inlay). 10cc.
  3. "10 CC | Artist". Official Charts. Archived from the original on 13 December 2014. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
  4. Steffen Hung. "dutchcharts.nl – Dutch charts portal". Archived from the original on 29 April 2009. Retrieved 12 March 2009.
  5. Jaclyn Ward (1 October 1962). "The Irish Charts – All there is to know". Irishcharts.ie. Archived from the original on 1 February 2010. Retrieved 4 September 2011.
  6. Song Review by Dave Thompson. "Life Is a Minestrone – 10cc | Listen, Appearances, Song Review". AllMusic. Retrieved 12 August 2014.
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