Happiness Is A Warm And Fuzzy Song: My Top 11 Feel Good-Enough Records

Bruce Springsteen, just to lighten up the darkness at the edge of town a bit, once wrote, "It Ain't No Sin To Be Glad You're Alive." Well, let's not get carried away...

There's nothing definitive about this list of feel-good songs, or more precisely, good-enough songs. After all, my goal in life is just to muddle on through somehow. Anyway, I tried to assign an order to this collection, but that got to be problematic - the end result being that while I can confirm that my number one chosen song is indeed my favorite, all the others comprise a ten-way tie for the number two position. There, that's a compromise of sorts that'll make me somewhat happy enough, or what passes for it, I guess. Speaking of a qualified happiness...

11. “Happy Boy" — The Beat Farmers
Okay, um, there’s no way this song should make me, or anybody for that matter, happy. But a chipper little ditty about a dead dog is such a perverse toe-tapper I couldn’t resist. And Country Dick Montana, who died in 1995, put such spirit into it in concert. So, in memory of Country Dick and Buddy Blue, who passed away earlier this month:

My little dog Spot got hit by a car
Hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba
Put his guts in a box and put him in a drawer
Hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba
I forgot all about it for a month and a half
Hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba
I looked in the drawer and started to laugh
Hubba hubba hubba hubba hubba

Well I'm a happy boy (happy boy)
Well I'm a happy boy (happy boy)
Oh ain't it good when things are going your way, hey hey?

10. “I’m Down” — The Beatles:
While we’re on the subject of paradoxical songs with lyrics so at odds with the music, consider this rough and raucous rocker from Paul McCartney. A great call ‘n’ response of a shouter — with backing vocal moral support from John and George — that totally belies the notion he’s all depressed and moody and thinking about how yesterday love was such an easy game to play:

You telling lies thinking I can't see
You don't cry cos you're laughing at me
I'm down (I'm really down)
I'm down (Down on the ground)
I'm down (I'm really down)
How can you laugh when you know I'm down
(How can you laugh) When you know I'm down.

9. “Pump It Up” — Elvis Costello:
Remember that pump in Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues”? The one that didn’t work because “the vandals took the handle“? Costello recovered the missing part and got it going again, setting it to a rapid-fire adrenaline rush accompaniment:

She’s been a bad girl.
She’s like a chemical.
Though you try to stop it,
She’s like a narcotic.
You wanna torture her.
You wanna talk to her.
All the things you bought for her,
Putting up your temp’rature.
Pump it up until you can feel it...

8. “Badlands” — Bruce Springsteen:
Sure he’s miserable now. There’s trouble in the heartland and he’s caught in a crossfire he doesn’t understand and there’s a head-on collision smashin’ in his guts, man, but one day he — and we — are gonna get out. So this song of grit, determination and inspiration is “for the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside / That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” If this sense of resolve to turn your life around doesn’t hit you in a visceral manner with tooth and nail ferocity and passion, then you have ice water in your veins.

Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for San Diego Union Tribune Books (R.I.P.). For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores, and most recently was purchasing manager for San Diego Technical Books. …

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