"The Good Life" | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Single by Tony Bennett | ||||
from the album I Wanna Be Around... | ||||
B-side | "Spring in Manhattan" | |||
Released | April 1963 | |||
Recorded | December 19, 1962 [1] | |||
Studio | Columbia 30th Street Studio, New York City [2] | |||
Genre | Jazz | |||
Length | 2:14 | |||
Label | Columbia | |||
Songwriter(s) | Sacha Distel, Jack Reardon [3] | |||
Producer(s) | Ernest Altschuler | |||
Tony Bennett singles chronology | ||||
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"The Good Life" (originally "La Belle Vie" in French) is a song by Sacha Distel with French lyrics by Jean Broussolle, published in 1962. It was featured in the movie The Seven Deadly Sins .
The song is best known in the English-speaking world via a 1963 recording by Tony Bennett with English lyrics by Jack Reardon. In the US, it was a number 18 hit on the U.S. pop singles chart, and number 7 on the Middle-Road Singles chart. [4] Outside the US, "The Good Life" rose to number 27 on the UK Singles Chart. [5] "The Good Life" became one of Bennett's staple songs, and was featured on four of his top-selling albums, including 1994's MTV Unplugged: Tony Bennett and 2006's Duets: An American Classic , the latter featuring Billy Joel. Bennett also named his 1998 autobiography after the song. He continued to perform the song live and did so at his final concerts, at Radio City Music Hall, aged 95.
Chart (1963) | Peak position |
---|---|
UK Singles (The Official Charts Company) | 27 |
US Billboard Easy Listening | 7 |
US Billboard Hot 100 | 18 |
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
---|---|---|
United States (RIAA) [6] | Gold | 500,000‡ |
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. |
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Alexandre "Sacha" Distel was a French singer, guitarist, songwriter and actor who had hits with a cover version of "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head" in 1970, which reached No 10 in the UK Charts, "Scoubidou", and "The Good Life". He was made Chevalier (Knight) of the Légion d'honneur in 1997. He had also scored a hit as a songwriter when Tony Bennett recorded Sacha's song for The Good Life in 1963. It peaked at #18 on Billboard's Hot 100 chart and Top 10 on the Easy Listening chart.
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