Songfacts®:

• In this uplifting track, Narada Michael Walden shares a lesson about gratitude. The more he learns to love his life exactly how it is, instead of focusing on the things he can't have, the more vibrant his life becomes. He's joined by a trio of superstar guests: Sting (vocals), Carlos Santana (guitar), and Stevie Wonder (harmonica).
  
  Walden is a veteran producer, musician, and songwriter, who worked behind the scenes on a number of R&B hits from Whitney Houston ("How Will I Know") and Mariah Carey ("Vision Of Love"). For "The More I Love My Life," he reunited with lyricist Jeffrey Cohen, his songwriting partner on the Aretha Franklin smash "Freeway Of Love." Walden already had the melody, which was inspired by the Afro-pop musician Ismael Lo and his 2001 French song "L'amour a Tous Les Droits."
  
  "Jeffrey Cohen came with 'The More I Love My Life,' exactly as it is," Walden told The Songfacts Podcast in 2024. "'The more I love my life, the more I feel your kiss.' It was so beautiful."
• Walden and Carlos Santana are longtime friends - Walden played the drums on Carlos' 1979 album, Oneness: Silver Dreams – Golden Reality, and they collaborated on the symphony The Enchanted Forest: Seven Higher Worlds Of Music, in 2010. Carlos was the first of the three guest stars to record his part for this track. Walden then went to New York to serve as musical director for Rainforest Foundation Fund Benefit concert, an annual event produced by Sting's wife, Trudie Styler. He convinced Sting to come to town a day early to lay down his vocals at Electric Lady Studios.
  
  "He put down what you're hearing on that record so beautifully and so professionally," Walden recalled.
  
  Then came Stevie Wonder, adding to the song's ebullience with his harmonica.
  
  "I was in LA and I got Stevie to come and do harmonica at Capitol Studios, which he then came and just killed it. Unbelievable," he continued. "What he's playing on that record is phenomenal. So I'm really, really happy that these great brothers are showing me such love and such favor at this time of my life."
• Walden is an accomplished drummer who got his start in the Mahavishnu Orchestra before manning the sticks for acts like Chick Corea, Jaco Pastorius, Weather Report, and Journey. But he learned at a young age there was somebody better than him: Stevie Wonder. "Little" Stevie's single "Fingertips (Part 2)" was all the rage back in 1963, around the time a young Walden first saw him perform in concert. Walden told Songfacts about the confidence-shattering experience:
  
  "When he walked on the stage, he was like an alien. They walked him out, little Stevie Wonder - not big Steve, little Steve, but he walked slowly like a little alien, you know? And the girls are screeching like it's The Beatles. That's how big he was. The sound is bouncing off the walls of these girls screaming as he walks on the stage. And when he gets to the microphone, [singing] he's so pure, everybody say yeah! Say yeah! Say yeah! Yeah. Yeah. [skatting the song] The band is just rocking hard, like just tearing a roof off.
  
  And I'm like 'Oh my God, how am I ever going to compete with this?' I'm a little kid. I'm like one to two years younger. I'm like, 'It's true. He is better than me. How am I going to make it?' That's what happened to me when I'm 10. He's 11 or 12. He wrecked my world, Stevie Wonder wrecked my world."
• This is the lead single from Walden's 13th solo album, Euphoria, which arrived eight years after its predecessor, Evolution. In the interim, he became the drummer for Journey (replacing Steve Smith) and played on their 2022 album, Freedom.