Songoftheday 9/26/14 - When we all give the power we all give the best, every minute of an hour don't think about a rest...

Opus - "Live Is Life"
from the album Up & Down (1985)
Billboard Hot 100 peak: #32 (two weeks)
Weeks in the Top-40: 5

Today's Song of the Day comes from the Austrian rock band Opus, who started out as a garage band in the early 70s, but didn't get to release their first album until the start of the next decade. It took a couple more years, but the group finally scored their first homeland top-10 hit with "Flying High". In 1984, they released a live album in Europe, Live Is Life. The title track was a folksy sing-a-long number that became immensely popular all over Europe, going to #1 in Germany, France, Canada, and Austria, and top-10 in England, Holland, and Italy. The song about how concerts are more important to them, caught an audience in American as they toured opening for Stevie Nicks, so the song was tacked on to their studio album Up & Down...

"Live Is Life" became Opus' first and only American hit single in March of 1986.

(Click below to see the rest of the post)


That same year, the Italian recording act Stargo also released a version of "Live Is Life", which went to #10 on the French singles chart...

In 1987, industrial-rock band Laibach released a cover of the song...

The song was revived yet again in 2002 by Austrian pop star DJ Otzi with Dutch dance group Hermes House Band, and went top-ten in France and Belgium...

More recently, in 2008, Opus re-released "Live Is Life" as a reggae song with Jerry and went back to the top-20 in their native Austria...

And finally, here's Opus rocking it up in 2009 in Austria...

Up tomorrow: A Brother believes this is romance.