“Life in One Day” by Howard Jones

"Life in One Day" bounced out in 1985 as the third single from Dream into Action, Howard Jones' second album: an uptempo pep talk about not wishing your life away. Jones wrote it alone, sings lead and plays on it, Rupert Hine produced, and Stephen W. Tayler recorded and mixed it, with Claudia Fontaine, Naomi Thompson and Caron Wheeler on backing vocals.

It went to number 14 in Britain and 19 on the Hot 100. The 12-inch split the song in two, a vocal mix and a mostly instrumental dub, and the formats parted ways across the Atlantic: British copies carried the piano instrumental "Boom Bap Respite" on the flip, while American ones swapped in "Learning How to Love", which UK fans already had from the "Look Mama" single.

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