Beautiful Life (Ace of Base song)
| "Beautiful Life" | ||||||||
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| Single by Ace of Base | ||||||||
| from the album The Bridge | ||||||||
| Released | October 20, 1995 | |||||||
| Recorded | 1995 | |||||||
| Genre | Eurodance, pop, techno | |||||||
| Length | 3:38 | |||||||
| Label | Mega | |||||||
| Writer(s) | Jonas Berggren, John Ballard | |||||||
| Producer(s) | Jonas Berggren, Denniz Pop, Max Martin | |||||||
| Ace of Base singles chronology | ||||||||
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"Beautiful Life" is a song by Swedish band Ace of Base, released on October 20 1995. In North America, it was the first single released from The Bridge; in Europe, it followed "Lucky Love".
The song was written on January 1, 1994 by band member Jonas Berggren while he was in the Canary Islands. At the time, "The Sign" had just hit #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 list, which inspired him to write the song. Berggren incorporated gospel elements into the song, and the single proved quite successful worldwide, reaching number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart in December 1995. It also hit #1 on the U.S. Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart.
J.D. Considine of Spin magazine said in a writeup about The Bridge that "the real genius of Ace of Base lies not with perky singing... but with the ability to make melancholy sound so damned appealing." The evaluation continues to narrow in scope as he continues to say "even the cheerfully titled 'Beautiful life' dampens its club-savvy stomp with a heartbreaking minor key chorus."
The video for the song was directed by Richard Heslop, who would go on to direct the band's later video for "Never Gonna Say I'm Sorry". The video included computer-generated bubbles which whisked the band from place to place. According to music channel VH1 in the United States, the band's record label, Arista Records, insisted the bubbles be removed from the video, leading to a somewhat strange-looking U.S. video, with the band members looking at (and reacting to) bubbles that were no longer there. In Europe, both versions of the video were released. In addition to the two alternate videos, remix videos were also created, and VH1 released a Pop-Up Video version of the video in 1998.
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