Classics

Good Life: the story of the record

"Good Life" was a rush job. A Detroit producer had a surprise hit in Britain, his label wanted a follow-up fast, and he wrote the main riff in his apartment in an afternoon. A gospel-trained singer from Chicago added the words over the phone. Weeks later Inner City were on Top of the Pops, and the record became one of the great anthems of house music. Here is how it happened, told largely in Kevin Saunderson's own words.

At a glance

Detroit, by way of the Paradise Garage

Kevin Saunderson was born in Brooklyn in 1964. According to the Encyclopedia of Detroit of the Detroit Historical Society, his family moved to Belleville, Michigan, when he was young. At Belleville High School he met Juan Atkins and Derrick May, the trio later known as the Belleville Three, and at college he joined their DJ collective Deep Space under the name Master Reese. His musical education had started with his parents' Motown and soul records, then disco: Chic, Sister Sledge, Evelyn "Champagne" King.

The decisive moment came in New York. In DJ Mag's video "The Making of a House Anthem", Saunderson remembers visiting the Paradise Garage as a teenager, feeling the bass vibrate before he even reached the room, and hearing Larry Levan for the first time. He calls it "an enlightening experience". Years later, when he made his own records, he says he always pictured that room: what would this sound like at the Garage?

That set him apart from his Detroit friends. Atkins and May made instrumental machine music. Saunderson wanted vocals, records "that could be played in a club, and also could be heard on the radio". His first release, "Triangle of Love" as Kreem, came out on Atkins' Metroplex label; then he started his own label, KMS, named after his initials, Kevin Maurice Saunderson. His brother Ron explained the technical side of the gear, and Atkins taught him how to arrange and mix. "Once I knew how to arrange and mix," Saunderson says, "it was nothing stopping me."

Paris Grey: a voice on the phone

Detroit and Chicago were close in those years. Saunderson and his friends drove their records down to Chicago, handed copies to Farley "Jackmaster" Funk, and sold boxes of 50 to 200 records straight to labels such as DJ International. "Chicago was a big inspiration as well as Detroit," Saunderson told Juno Daily in 2021. On one of those trips he became friends with the Chicago producer Terry "Housemaster" Baldwin.

When Baldwin visited Detroit, Saunderson played him unfinished tracks from his reel-to-reel, among them an instrumental that would become "Big Fun". Baldwin knew the right voice for it: a singer he worked with, Paris Grey. In the DJ Mag video Saunderson calls that introduction "the beginning of Inner City".

They never met before the song was written. Saunderson sent the instrumental on cassette via Baldwin and talked to Grey on the phone about what he wanted: something uplifting and happy. She told him, as he recalls in a Mixmag video, that she was a church girl who loved house music. Then one day she called back, said the song was done, and sang it to him down the phone. "I gotta get you out here right away," he told her. He gave the same account in his Red Bull Music Academy lecture in Berlin in 2018: "She did write the lyrics and she sung it over the phone."

Grey was not chasing fame. According to Saunderson's account in Fact, she had worked in a make-up department in Chicago, earned a few hundred dollars per guest vocal, and at first did not want to travel or appear in videos. What convinced him was the voice. "Her voice was just so unique," he wrote, "it was an instrument by itself."

Big Fun: the record before

"Good Life" only exists because of the record that came first. Saunderson made "Big Fun" in 1987 with James Pennington in a basement home studio, with three or four pieces of equipment: drum machines, a sampler, a Yamaha keyboard. He was working a job and going to school at the same time.

The heart of the track is its chord, and in the Mixmag video Saunderson reveals where it came from. He and Pennington took a single note from "Let's Get Brutal" by Nitro Deluxe, sampled it and blended it with another sound until it became a chord they could play. In DJ Mag he insists this was not theft but invention: "We were using the tools we had to be creative." That chord became the basis of the Inner City sound, and it returns in "Good Life".

The tape had only eight tracks, and "Big Fun" used seven. To add Paris Grey's vocals, Saunderson took the reel to Juan Atkins, who had a 16-track machine in an attic studio with low ceilings and no vocal booth. Grey sang into one microphone in the corner, with the music turned down so she could hear herself. Atkins did the first mix.

Then the record sat on a shelf, until the British promoter and label man Neil Rushton came to Detroit looking for music. Rushton had met the scene through Derrick May, and Saunderson played him a handful of tracks, "Big Fun" among them. It became one of three Saunderson productions on Rushton's 1988 double album "Techno! The New Dance Sound of Detroit" on 10 Records, a Virgin sub-label, as the Detroit weekly Metro Times noted. Saunderson also pressed it on KMS. Demand outran his pressing plants, bootlegs appeared, and by his own estimate he sold 40,000 to 60,000 copies himself before licensing it to 10 Records. "I thought it was a dream," he said of that year in the RBMA lecture.

In Britain it hit the summer of acid house. Saunderson remembers seeing Paul Oakenfold play it at Spectrum in London: "I never seen something so powerful." "Big Fun" entered the chart on 3 September 1988 and peaked at No. 8 three weeks later, with 14 weeks in the Top 75.

Making Good Life: an afternoon in an apartment

By September 1988 "Big Fun" was climbing the British chart, and Neil Rushton, now Saunderson's manager, got in touch. In the DJ Mag video Saunderson repeats the message: "This record is, it's going to be a hit. It's taken off. We need a follow up." As he puts it: "So now I'm rushed into creating Good Life."

He called James Pennington to come over to his apartment. Pennington never showed up, so Saunderson did it alone. His only plan was to make something that connected to "Big Fun" and stayed uplifting. He came up with the main riff quickly, added a string part and drums, and arranged what he had. Speaking to DJ Mag in 2014, he named the tools: a Casio CZ-5000 synthesiser, a Roland TR-909 drum machine and little else. "It wasn't the intent to make a record to be a hit."

The track went to Paris Grey, and the process from "Big Fun" repeated itself. She wrote the words, kept the mood happy, "and instead of Big Fun, now it became Good Life". When she sang it to him over the phone, Saunderson says, "I knew right then I had something that was special", and went straight to Chicago, where she recorded her vocals at a studio she regularly worked out of. The vocals, he stresses, were "100% Paris".

Back in Detroit he built the track around her voice. His fraternity brother, the keyboard player Roy Holmon, added extra parts, and the final mix was done at Pearl Sound Studios with the engineer Ben Grosse. That mix was short, more of a radio version, so the label commissioned club mixes from Saunderson's circle: Juan Atkins, Derrick May and, from Chicago, Steve "Silk" Hurley. The reaction, in Saunderson's words: "It was right out of the box. It was fire."

Top of the Pops and the charts

"Good Life" entered the UK chart on 10 December 1988 at No. 22. A week later it was the biggest climber of the week, up 16 places to No. 6, and in January 1989 it spent two weeks at No. 4.

Source: Official Charts.

For Saunderson, who had wanted to stay in the background as a producer, it meant television. On Top of the Pops he found himself on the same bill as Diana Ross, pretending to play a keyboard that made no sound. In the RBMA lecture he admitted he felt only anxiety on stage: "What the hell am I doing up here?" "It was just pop music and pop success," he says in the DJ Mag video. He was glad that Paris Grey turned out to be "a natural in front of the camera", so he could step back a little: "She sung the songs and wrote the song, so let her do her thing."

The rest of Europe followed. "Good Life" went to No. 1 in Finland and No. 2 in West Germany, and reached the top ten in the Netherlands, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Sweden and Norway. In the US it topped Billboard's Hot Dance Club Play chart in the issue of 21 January 1989 and reached No. 73 on the Hot 100. In total, Detroit public radio WDET counts 12 UK Top 40 hits for Inner City.

Versions, remixes and samples

The Discogs master release lists dozens of pressings from 1988 alone. The remixes tell the story of the record's two cities: Detroit through Juan Atkins and Derrick May, Chicago through Steve "Silk" Hurley.

The most recent chapter connects to another of our stories. Madonna's 2026 album Confessions II opens with a sample of "French Kiss", and its single "Bring Your Love" with Sabrina Carpenter samples "Good Life". As the Tribune News Service reported, Saunderson is credited as a songwriter on the new track.

Why it still matters

"Good Life" closed a circle. Detroit techno and Chicago house are often told as two separate stories, but this record needed both: a Detroit producer raised on the Paradise Garage, a Chicago singer from the church, Detroit remixes by Atkins and May, and a Chicago remix by Steve "Silk" Hurley, whose own "Jack Your Body" had shown two years earlier that this music could top the British chart.

It also proved that a club record could carry real joy without losing its edge. Saunderson's goal from the start was music that worked on a big sound system and on the radio. "Good Life" did both, and it still does. Recalling Inner City's Glastonbury set in 2019, he says the energy changed the moment the track came on: "All these years later, so powerful."

The band carries on. Paris Grey eventually stepped back, and today Inner City is Saunderson with his son Dantiez and the Detroit singer Steffanie Christi'an. The record keeps finding new listeners, through samples by Rihanna, Britney Spears and now Madonna, and through DJs who still save it for the moment a room needs lifting. Records like this turn up every month in the "Still in the bag" corner of our chart, and the Classics page collects their stories.

Questions

Who made "Good Life"?

Inner City: the Detroit producer Kevin Saunderson and the Chicago singer Paris Grey, who wrote and sang the vocals. Roy Holmon added keyboard parts and is credited as a co-writer.

When did "Good Life" come out?

In November 1988 on 10 Records, a Virgin sub-label, as the follow-up to "Big Fun". It entered the UK chart in December 1988 and peaked at No. 4 in January 1989.

How was "Good Life" made?

Saunderson wrote the riff, strings and drums in his apartment on a Casio CZ-5000 and a Roland TR-909. Paris Grey wrote and recorded the vocals in Chicago, and the final mix was done at Pearl Sound Studios in Detroit.

Is "Good Life" house or techno?

Both. It was made by one of the founders of Detroit techno, sung by a Chicago house vocalist and remixed by Juan Atkins, Derrick May and Steve "Silk" Hurley.

Who has sampled "Good Life"?

Among others Hercules and Love Affair, Rihanna, Britney Spears and, in 2026, Madonna and Sabrina Carpenter on "Bring Your Love".