Life Is a Minestrone

"Life Is a Minestrone" is a 1975 song by the English rock band 10cc, released as the lead single from their third studio 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.

Personnel

Adapted from the liner notes of The Original Soundtrack.
10cc

Lol Creme – vocals, piano, percussion, electric guitar
Kevin Godley – drums, timbales, percussion, backing vocals
Eric Stewart – electric guitar, backing vocals
Graham Gouldman – bass, additional guitars, backing vocals

Release

The song was released as the lead single from The Original Soundtrack, as the band had reservations regarding the over-six-minute ballad "I'm Not in Love" being the lead. In the United States, "Life Is a Minestrone" was not issued until after the release of "I'm Not in Love", so the band re-issued the record there in 1976 with "Lazy Ways" from their next studio 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.

Reception

Commercial

The song charted at No. 7 on the UK singles chart, No. 12 on the Dutch Top 40, and No. 7 on the Irish Singles Chart in 1975. In 1976, it charted at No. 104 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Critical

In his review for AllMusic, Dave Thompson called 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 noted 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".