“Life is Beautiful” by Sixx A.M.

"Life Is Beautiful" is where Sixx:A.M. started: the debut single and lead track off The Heroin Diaries Soundtrack, out in 2007 on Eleven Seven Music. Nikki Sixx, the Mötley Crüe founder who wrote it, turns his own heroin addiction into hard rock, the wreckage of those years and the hard-won conclusion of the title.

The chorus carries a ghost. One of its lines comes from Robbin Crosby, Sixx's old roommate and Ratt's co-lead guitarist, whom Sixx had introduced to heroin and who died of an overdose in 2002. That weight is why the song lands. It climbed to number two on the Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, and the video scrawls its words and rough hand-drawn sketches across the band's performance, with Bones Elias of Heaven Below and Julien-K sitting in on drums.

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