The Language of Life is the fifth studio album by British musical duo Everything but the Girl. It was released on 5 February 1990 by Atlantic Records and Blanco y Negro Records. The Language of Life became Everything but the Girl's second album to surpass sales of 500,000 copies, but the album divided the group's British fanbase. In 2012, group member Tracey Thorn described The Language of Life as "a slightly slick, kind of semi-jazzy, sophisticated record" and recalled that it "was a definite attempt to try and do something that had a character to it, but in retrospect when we were asked why we had taken that direction, we couldn't entirely say why".