“This is the life” by Amy MacDonald

"This Is the Life" gave Amy Macdonald's 2007 debut album its name, and she wrote it at 16, the day after a night out on her sister's ID. She got caught, got grounded and spent the whole next day shut in her room, where the memory of the night before turned into a song.

The Scottish singer-songwriter wrote it alone, sings lead and backing vocals and plays acoustic guitar, with Seton Daunt on electric guitar, Jamie Sefton on bass plus flugelhorn, saxophone and trumpet, Pete Wilkinson on piano, keyboard and percussion, and Adam Falkner on drums; Bob Clearmountain mixed it. It rolls along at 100 beats per minute in C-sharp minor, and while it stalled at 28 in the UK, mainland Europe took to it hard: number one in five countries and top 10 on 12 other charts.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.