Songfacts®:

• The title track of Mary J Blige's second album, "My Life" samples heavily from Roy Ayers' 1976 signature track "Everybody Loves the Sunshine." Blige has been a fan of the Roy Ayers song since a very young age. She recalled to NME:
  
  "I was four years old and living in Hastings, New York. I'd never felt anything like it. It made me feel so many emotions for a little kid. I saw so many colors. Years later I sampled it on one of my songs, 'My Life,' because the song was so important to me. It makes me feel good and bad all at the same time."
• The song is a stark look at what Blige had been through by this stage of her life. Her career was going gangbusters, with her debut album delivering two #1 R&B hits: "You Remind Me" and "Real Love." But behind the scenes, she was struggling to keep it together, embroiled in the cauldron of fame and caught in a fraught and sometimes abusive relationship with Cedric "K-Ci" Hailey of Jodeci. At the end of this song she lets on to her struggles:
  
  You will see I'm so down and out
  Cryin' every day
  Don't know what to do or to say
• Blige wrote this with the track's producers, Sean "Puffy" Combs and Chucky Thompson, as well as her friend Arlene DelValle, who also contributed to the album closer, "Be Happy."
• Blige's older sister, LaTonya Blige-DaCosta, provided additional backing vocals on the song.
• The album peaked at #7 in the US, where it also debuted at #1 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In December 1995, it was certified triple-Platinum for shipments of three million copies in the US.
• "My Life" wasn't released as a single but it became one of Mary's signature songs, often included in her setlists. In 2021 she told her story in a documentary called My Life.