“Life’s for the Living” by Passenger

The cover for Passenger’s 10th anniversary release of his 2012 album
Courtesy: Chris Vallejo & Mike Rosenberg

“Life’s for the Living” by Passenger reminds us that it sometimes takes the looming certainty of eventual death to challenge us to seize opportunities; to not take everything so seriously. The newly recorded version of the familiar song forces us to evaluate what we’re prioritizing in our daily existence. Recently re-released on Passenger’s 10^th anniversary edition of the album, “All the Little Lights,” the song is a haunting duet with Irish singer-songwriter Foy Vance that calls on all of us to reconsider what’s important.

Dismissing those “dressed in their suits and their boots,” the song’s narrator heads “down to the cafe to find all the boys lost in books and crackling vinyl.” And there, he writes a poem in the bathroom that makes up the song’s chorus:

Don’t you cry for the lost
Smile for the living
Get what you need and
Give what you’re given
Life’s for the living, so live it
Or you’re better off dead

“Life’s for the Living” is less about dismissing one’s grief than it is about a joyous embrace of the life that remains. It also asks listeners to consider how that time might best be spent, with lines like “we all had new iPhones but no one had no one to call.”

English singer-songwriter Passenger recently re-released “All the Little Lights.”

In fact, “Life’s for the Living” treats grief respectfully with the image of a mourning widow – one who supports the song’s overall thrust towards living.

As the pre-chorus tells us:

And I stumbled down
To the stomach of the town
Where the widow takes memories
To slowly drown
With a hand to the sky
And a mist in her eye, she said —

Once, we are told not to cry for the lost but to smile for the living. As Passenger states on his website about the chorus: “to me [it] feels like an acknowledgement of all of the madness and an understanding that the best way of dealing with it is to not resist it. Not to spend your time bemoaning the past or dwelling on missed opportunities but instead to swim out and meet the waves head on and more than that — enjoy it.” And “Life’s for the Living” reminds us to not give up our dreams in the process.

You can watch Passenger and Foy Vance sing “Life’s for the Living” in the video below: