So yesterday reader and commenter Blackwing asked the question, “I’m curious, what’s your #1 sunniest song?” I’d offered I Can See Clearly Now, originally performed by Johnny Nash, as being in the running for the sunniest song ever. That doesn’t mean it’s not Numero Uno or anything. It just seems to me that music isn’t a competition. The possibility of a thousand-way tie is more likely than a Top Ten list. But I’ll give the question a whirl.

It’s only fair that I pull rank a little. For a long time, I played in a cover band that specialized in playing Happy Hours. By definition, we played happy music. If songs didn’t make the audience happy, they’d go over the side in a heartbeat. So I’m bound to have more experience with this sort of thing than many others.

We also have to stipulate for the record that I’m going to refer only to songs that are manifestly and thoroughly happy. There are many, many songs that might end up on a list like this that are at least partially wistful. Things sucked, but now they don’t, one-two-three-four. I’m leaving those out, too, or the list is going to look like a phone book.

So here goes. These are the happiest, sunniest songs I can tease out of my cobwebby brain. Feel free to add some of your own in the comments.

If you don’t mind, we’ll skip past the Gregorian Chants and hurdy gurdy music and so forth, and skip forward to locate the happiest song to emerge from Classical Music. A Little Night Music:

Then Beethoven showed up and we ended up with Romantic music, which wasn’t very often. It was mostly solipsistic, and you have to wade through a lot of stuff that sounds like another invasion of Poland to get to the Ode to Joy. Hard pass from there on in.

Luckily opera showed up and saved the day. There were a lot of jolly murders, and plenty of tubby girls stepping out on their significant others. They also perfected an entire art form: Brindisi, otherwise known as the Drinking Song.

Opera was the pop music of the early 20th century, but two world wars and some depressions and pandemics and similar amusements kinda put a damper on manifestly happy music. Even songs like Happy Days Are Here Again have a tacit acknowledgement that happy days had been seen on milk cartons for some time. So we’ll leave them out.

When the wars were over, people didn’t want to hear anyone crying in their beer anymore. They put fins on their cars and men into space and atoms in their bombs. They wanted to party. America led the way, but even when Europeons tried to skewer the vibe, they ended up making the best advertisement for it yet: You Want To Be an American

You can watch Sophia Loren shimmy to it if you prefer.

Postwar life was all about simple things like finding a mate, having some kids, and figuring out where to live. It lent itself to charming attestations of profound things. Maybe the sunniest voice of all time, Nat King Cole, expressed the simple joys of falling in love:

South of the border, they caught on to the whole space age vibe, or maybe invented it, I don’t know. But I guarantee you can’t be sad when you’re listening to Esquivel!

Something about Mexican heritage produces genuinely happy songs. The following band was named after Gene Autry’s horse, but saxophonist Danny Flores remembered his roots. One tequila, two tequila, three tequila, FLOOR!

We’re not done mining this vein of rich ore from the navel of the moon. This one is an ancient, trad number, a wedding song from Veracruz. It is literally impossible to feel bad while this song is playing:

Closing out the fifties, the Isley Brothers came up with an outro riff at the end of their performances. It went over so big they turned it into an entire song that might just be the happiest sound ever made by humans. Twenty years later, it helped make Animal House into a hit, and twenty years after that, you could still make drunk college kids do the worm when you played it. Shout!

The sixties isn’t really a decade. It’s two decades. The early sixties were really a coda on the fifties. The late sixties were the on-ramp to nowhere that the seventies represented. Four dead in Ohio isn’t going to set your foot tapping. But man, the sixties had all sorts of happy songs. To wit:

If that one’s a little to downtempo for you, try the Young Rascals on for size:

If you don’t think this next one is the happiest song ever composed, you’re obviously not a girl. The fun is exponentially increased by this video mashup, watching Van Morrison face the wrong way on teevee, and then twitch a bit in his Carnaby Street jacket during some obligatory lipsynch performance. The lp version of the song is pasted over it to increase the weirdness. It’s the “Rosebud” of rock remembrance.

Musical happiness comes in all sorts of flavors. It’s not possible to frown while listening to the band perform Ophelia. But I prefer a drunkard’s dream for our list:

Roots rock guys provided most of the happy music as the decade ticked over. Go ahead, try to listen to this CCR song without singing along.

But I know we’re going to get into trouble here. There are people out there that use Born To Be Wild as their wedding song. They think Queensryche ballads are touching. They name their firstborn and their pitbulls after Led Zeppelin songs. We need to include these folks in our happiness parade. That ain’t easy without stretching the definition of: happy. But I’m up to the task. Ladies and germs, I give you unalloyed joy, courtesy of some motorheads:

If riding your dirtbike while shirtless and barefoot isn’t happiness squared, I don’t know what is.

About the same time as that last one, disco was the official happy music of the cocaine and big lapel set. A big divide opened up between people who liked rock, and people who liked the Bee Gees. Sooner or later, though, someone had to bridge the gap. And that’s how Play That Funky Music became the National Anthem of fun.

A very long musical ride from Grand Funk, you could plug an awful lot of Al Green songs into our list to get the same effect. This one is as good as any. It even has “happy” in the name: Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy)

I wouldn’t spend too much time parsing the reverend Al’s lyrics on this one, or any of his others. This is the fellow who intones, “I’ve been trying to call you all day, but I don’t have your number.” Just bounce along with it, and smile like he does.

Rock and pop and opera and classical music is fine and all, can bring a sunny smile to any face if you choose your battles carefully, but it’s all conversation compared to the right kind of church:

Well, whatever I forgot, put it in the comments. I’m in too good a mood to erase anything.