Songfacts®:

• This song about traveling the globe is a single from American pop-rock band OneRepublic's second studio album, Waking Up.
• OneRepublic frontman and principal songwriter Ryan Tedder has penned a number of smash hits both for his band ("Apologize") and for other artists "Bleeding Love"). In an interview with NPR about the art of songwriting, he discussed writing hooks and explained it didn't necessarily have to be the chorus like in the case of this song. Said Tedder: "The hook can be the track itself. Like in Coldplay, 'Clocks' the hook was [hums the opening piano riff] — that was the hook. In [Black Eyed Peas'] 'Boom Boom Pow,' there is no hook. It is just one section after another of really catchy, infectious club music without any one section overriding the next.
  
  In the upcoming single, 'Good Life,' the real hook is the post hook - it's what comes after it. We have this REALLY super simple whistle. I hadn't heard a whistle in a song in forever and that's all I kept hearing on the song so I just whistled this melody into the mic and it really is the hook - it's the catchiest part of the song."
• The song had a long shelf life. It peaked at #8 on the Hot 100 nearly two years after its initial release, thanks to its use in various media. "Good Life" was featured in the trailers for the films Eat Pray Love and One Day, and had TV placements in the series Cougar Town, Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Rookie Blue and 90210. The background music was played on various Walt Disney World television and radio commercials during a six month campaign and in August 2012, the tune was featured in a Honda Summer Clearance Event commercial.
• The music video was directed by Ethan Lader (Mariah Carey's "Oh Santa!", Bruno Mars' "Just The Way You Are") and was shot during a break in OneRepublic's 2010 Fall tour.
• Ryan Tedder's lyrics are actually about a trip he took to London. But the OneRepublic frontman knew to have a hit he'd have to make it more universal and also something he could relate to, since he would have to sing it ever night. "I'm not thinking, 'Let's write something that's going to make the kids dance,'" he told Radio.com. "You have to write something that you want to sing every night. So the hardest part with every song, personal and universal, kind of getting that balance."