Well, last week we explored as many songs about heartache and heartbreak that we could fit into a readable column. The feedback was great. Seems that's a universal subject ... timeless to boot ... and that we've all had one, or perhaps more than one, of the experiences brought forth by some of these songs.
So in the interest of fairness, I thought I'd try to identify my favorite "songs that just make you feel good." They don't churn up any raw emotion ... they don't make you feel like your baby just left you or that your dog died. They just, you know, give you a nice, inner glow. You hear them and you just walk around with a smile on your face the whole rest of the day. And as longhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif as there's no emotional connection with the person you're trying to forget, you can seek them out when you're depressed and -- for that three or four minutes, at least -- escape that elephant of moroseness pressing down on your chest.
So here we go ...
"59th Street Bridge Song" by Paul Simon. I like the Harper's Bizarre's version of this better than the recorded original, so I provided a link to a live performance of it by S&G.
Doesn't matter. It's such an infectious song. It's a walking song, if you know what I mean. All I think of when I hear it is walking around New York, or Boston, on days when I have nothing to do ... no people I have to see. Perfect days to get lost in the city and become an observer. You can't help but feel absolutely uplifted after you've heard it.
"Life's A Long Song," Jethro Tull. Actually, this isn't necessarily written as an uplifting "feel-good" song. Ian Anderson has said it's about taking stock of your life and trying to make some good out of the things that happen to you. Remember, he says, "Life is a long song ... but the tune ends too soon for us all."
It's an important thing to remember. You're in that box a long, long time. The tune ends too soon for us all.
And I love, love, love this version of it. One of great things about Jethro Tull over the year was their ability to arrange songs that would make a chamber orchestra jealous ... and then turn around and do something totally, uncompromisingly, rocking like "Locomotive Breath." Anderson was never a darling of the critics, and -- thus -- I always thought he was/is unfairly underrated. To this day, Tull is one of my all-time favorite bands.
"It's A Beautiful Day," U2. OK. I have to admit before anything else, that I'll always think of the New England Patriots winning their first Super Bowl when I hear this song. It's one of the two that U2 played during the halftime show. And when the Patriots raised the banner the following September, that's the song they played. Not only that, it's the song they played to test the PA system out.
But beyond all that, this song's pretty simple to figure out. It's about feeling hopeless but being able to rejoice in what you have.
"What you don't have you don't need it now ... what you don't know you can feel it somehow ..."
Oh ... and one more thing. I was once asked, "if you could be anyone in the world, who would you be?" My answer: Bono. I've seen U2 a couple of times, and the sway he holds over his audience ... unbelievable. I'd love to have that much impact on people.
This is one of two U2 songs on this list (well, there could be more than two, but you have be as diversified as you can).
The other one is "Gloria.". This, of course, comes from the group's early days when they were very up front about their Christianity. And while I'm not always a big fan of "God Rock," this song is different, somehow. The final chorus ... "Gloria, in te domine/Gloria, Gloria ... sounds like it's coming right from the heavens.
The version of this song that U2 did at Red Rocks, way back in 1984, is still one of the best. I was once under the influence of a particular organic chemical (back when I did that sort of thing) while riding home from somewhere with that Red Rocks tape blasting at full decibels. I could have sworn that the final chorus was coming right out of the sky!
"The Swallow," The Moody Blues. This is probably not one of the better known Moody Blues songs. It's by Justin Hayward, he of plaintive, painful, heart-rending love ballads like "Nights in White Satin," where you just want to cry for anyone that tortured.
But this is the 60-something-year-old Justin. The song is off the band's "Strange Times" album ... a record that barely made a dent in the popular culture of 1999. In fact, if you haven't ever heard of the album, or the song, you're hardly alone. I'd say you were in the majority.
But I'm a fan ... or this band, and of this song. It has a peaceful vibe to it. He said he wrote it because every evening he and his wife would sit out side and watch the swallows from their home in Monaco. Just a peaceful, romantic thing to do, I'd imagine.
"It's so strange/life in the really slow lane/Take it easy/That's what we'll do."
Nothing says contentment like that, does it?
Enjoy "Nothing Changes," which was tacked on to the end of this clip.
"Peaceful, Easy Feeling," Eagles. If you're going to to write a blog post about "feel-good" you have to include this ... even though it's not one of my personal favorites. Truth? I always gravitated toward Don Henley when it came to the Eagles. Henley was grit. Henley was caustic, acerbic observations about the "beautiful people" he had to deal with in the music business. Henley was "Hotel California" and "Life in the Fast Lane."
Glenn Frey, even though he didn't write this particular song (nobody from the group did), took the lead on it. Which is fine. Frey was always more laid back. In fact, were it not for the fact that somebody had to play drums, you'd never know Henley had anything to do with this song. Frey sings it, Bernie Leadon provides the main harmony, and Randy Meisner comes in at the end ... for the third part.
It's a nice song, though. Kind of gives off a good vibe. Like a great majority of rock songs, it has to do with "man loves woman and isn't quite certain where it's all going to go." But in this particular case, "I have a peaceful easy feeling ... 'cause I'm already on the ground."
"Buy For Me The Rain," by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. This is just a gorgeous song. Just listen to it. It is beautiful. You can't help but feel 10 times better after hearing it than you did before.
It comes with a few caveats. "Buy for me the robin, darling, buy for me the wing/Buy for me a sparrow, almost any flying thing/And I’ll buy for you a tree, my love, where a robin’s nest may grow/Buy it for me now, babe, the years all hurry so."
I think that's the verse that kind of sums up the song. Life for the now. The years all hurry so. Or, as Ian Anderson would say, "the tune ends too soon for us all."
"Groovin," The Young Rascals. The Rascals were a favorite at my address growing up. This is another song that just kind of defies explanation. It just is. Me 'n' my sweetie, groovin on a Sunday afternoon, creating our own vibe. Sometimes, simple is better.
"Daydream," Lovin' Spoonful. Another song like "Groovin," that that doesn't need all that much of an analysis. It's out of the same era ... mid 1960s, when there were a lot of these "feel-good" songs that -- for all I know -- came out of the artists' habitual inhalations of organic chemical substances.
That sort of thing did produce its own unique vibe.
By the way, The Spoonful impressed Paul McCartney enough that he wrote a tribute to it of sorts ... "Good Day Sunshine" from the "Revolver" album.
"Lazy Day" by Spanky And Our Gang. This complete the trilogy of mid-sixties, hippy-dippy feel-good songs you'll see here.
I don't know ... I suppose it would be nice to have that much merriment in your life, but again, one can only imagine what substances were being smoked while a lot of these songs were conceived and even recorded.
What makes these songs to special to me is the era in which they were recorded. In many other aspects, it was horrible. We were in the middle of a horrendously unpopular war, there was civil unrest in many of our major cities, we were only three or four years removed from John F. Kennedy's assassination ... there were plenty of reasons to for us to be an unhappy, apprehensive and dour nation.
Yet these minstrels -- and that's what they were -- who walked around singing about love and peace, and "saying right out loud, I love you" in the middle of a crowded park ... they performed a service. They reminded people that they can find their own happiness in life's most mundane moments ... a walk in the park, or even a walk past a house with a freshly mowed lawn (one of the best aromas I know, by the way). They reminded us that life didn't need to be complicated, and a struggle all the time.
As the sixties progressed, of course, the horror took over. The negative overwhelmed the positive. We had Chicago, Altamont, Manson ... the decade careened to a tumultuous close. But for those few years in the mid-sixties, when there was still an element of optimism, those kinds of songs really illustrated it.
I will conclude this piece with a Beatles song off "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" that I've always loved. It's "Fixing a Hole" by Paul McCartney.
First of all, some idiot thought this was about drugs when Sgt. Pepper came out. Was that person serious? It was? Just like "Hey, Jude" was about heroin because of one line that could have only been interpreted that way by someone hopelessly paranoid and out of touch?
"Fixing A Hole" is not about drugs. In fact, it's probably one of the few songs on Sgt. Pepper that isn't, in some way, related to, or in response to, drugs.
By the time Pepper came out, everybody wanted to know more about this LSD. And when the Beatles admitted they'd used it -- which they had been doing since about 1965 -- that just left all their songs open to whatever meaning people wanted to give them.
It didn't help when songs like "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" alluded to hallucinogenic experiences ... or when the bridges to "A Day in the Life" exploded in cacophony as soon as Lennon sang "I'd Love To Turn You On."
These days, that might mean something else. Back then, it meant "drop acid."
It may sound like a song about Sir Paul doing chores around the house ... fixing his roof, filling the cracks in his walls ... but while the song wasn't about drugs, it's also true that few Beatles songs from that era came metaphor-free.
So it is with this one. But I like the metaphors. I like the fact that McCartney was saying that after all the hurly-burly of Beatlemania, he was ready to take some time for Paul ... that the world couldn't own him forever ... that it was time for him to kick back a little and figure out what was important in his life.
For that was basically where the Beatles themselves were at after they stopped touring in 1966. I think Paul wrote about all their efforts, collectively, over that autumn and winter leading into "Sergeant Pepper" to step back from the maddening crowd and re-establish their connection with themselves.
The line that always stood out to me: "I'm taking the time for a number of things/that weren't important yesterday."
Love that line. Says it all to me.
Thanks for reading ... and, again, any input is welcome.
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