It has a serious feel to the song, a warmth. It is not meant to be a pure dance song as it is expressing a person’s independence. It has a slow groove driven by a bass riff and electronic drum beats bathed in synth sounds including some synth horns. They were part of the New Wave of music that was going on in the early 80’s along with band’s like Duran Duran and other two name bands. Talk Talk’s song “It’s My Life” is a heavy synthesizer song as that is what type of music they played. So they narrowed the prospects of 100’s of songs down to “It’s My Life” and the INXS song “Don’t Change”…we see which one won out or we wouldn’t be discussing this song right now would we. They wanted to a new song on it, but didn’t want to take time to write a new song. No Doubt was on a slight break as Gwen was recording here debut solo album, but they wanted to get some material out so they thought of putting out a greatest hits album. And I don’t remember them doing much else in the States after this. The song performed well enough in the states that it actually earned him enough freedom to do things his way going forward. The song was his manifesto that it is his life and he will do what he wants to know, not what anyone tells him to do. “It’s My Life” came about due to Mark Hollis’ wanting to assert his independence from his record label and because he didn’t want to be swayed by the popular public opinion. Both were big hits for the respective bands with Talk Talk’s version going to #31 on the Billboard Charts while the No Doubt version went as high as #10 and garnered a Grammy nomination for Best Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal…they didn’t win. The Cover”, we are discussing the song “It’s My Life” by the band Talk Talk and the cover by No Doubt.