 "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".Producer Tommy LiPuma had previously worked with artists like Miles Davis, Horace Silver, Randy Newman, and George Benson, and had contributed production to Aztec Camera's 1987 album "Love".