Vivir Mi Vida: meaning and origin of Marc Anthony's salsa hit

Vivir Mi Vida is a life-affirming hit by Marc Anthony, released on his 2013 album 3.0. The song marked his return to salsa and helped the album win Best Salsa Album at the Latin Grammy Awards, reinforcing Anthony's place among the most successful tropical salsa artists of his generation.

Both the lyrics and harmonic progression of Vivir Mi Vida derive from the famous song C'est la vie written by Khaled—the Algerian leading musician in the folk genre raï. Khaled's original track is composed of mixed lyrics in Algerian Darja Arabic and French that Marc Anthony has expertly adapted into Spanish.

The title of Vivir Mi Vida literally means Live My Life. The lyrics call the listener to dance, sing, laugh, and keep moving through sadness, turning the phrase into a simple philosophy of living in the present without being consumed by worry.

Watch Vivir Mi Vida by Marc Anthony:

Compositionally, Vivir Mi Vida clearly follows the canons of tonal theory, namely the Aeolian mode also known as the natural minor. In the harmonic analysis of the song's chord chains, the scale degrees (denoted with Roman numerals) show the following progression in the key of C minor: Cm–A♭–E♭–B♭ or i–VI–III–VII.

Note that the Cm tonic triad is the only minor chord in this progression, and the rest of the chords belong to the relative Ionian mode which forms the overall major mood of the song. Curiously, Khaled's original track C'est la vie is accompanied by the same chord progression.

Discover more songs composed in Aeolian minor mode and their harmonic analyses in the following articles: