It's My Life (The Animals Song) - Animals Original

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. 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 day

The 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."