Cheerful songs about maudlin things

Cafe Society
61

More Weird Al:

Trigger Happy, a Beach Boys style parody about shooting people - “Now why’d you have to get so mad? It was just a lousy flesh wound, Dad!”

The Night Santa Went Crazy, another Christmas song. The “extra gory version” has lines like “Yes, Virginia, now Santa Claus is dead / Some guy from the SWAT team blew a hole through his head.”

Happy Birthday - “There’s garbage in the water / There’s poison in the sky / I guess it won’t be long before we’re all gonna die!”

Good Old Days, a nice pleasant song about bashing in people’s heads and kidnapping girlfriends

62

Two words - The Eels…

Man does he have a way of putting the ultra-depressing into happy sounding songs. There you are happily bopping your head along, tapping your foot as you listen to the songs only to realize he’s describing his mother’s slow decay into cancer

63

it’s been said before… but The Smiths!

Accept Yourself
Jeane
Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now
Back To The Old House
Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
These Things Take Time
William, It Was Really Nothing
Unloveable
I Want The One I Can’t Have

…that’s just from the first few albums…

If you thought Morrissey was a big old mope, you sort of missed the humor and joy he reveled in, in that maudlin state. Johnny Marr, a fan of sixties girl groups, brings in upbeat melodies to fuck with your head even more…

64

Pink Floyd’s Free Four off Obscured by Clouds.

Over a cheerfull major key guitar shuffle. . .

The memories of a man in his old age
Are the deeds of a man in his prime
You suffer in the gloom of the sick-room
And talk to yourself as you die

Life is a short warm moment
And death is a long cold rest
You get your chance to try – in the twinkling of an eye
Eighty years with luck – or even less

65

Mack the Knife as sung by Bobby Darin.

66

Good god I love this board.
Simply can’t imagine where else I’d see a reference to DS.
Our band covered Capaldi’s Cafe back in the early 80s - the only tune yours truly was allowed to sing!

67

American Pie hasn’t been cited yet, but it’s about the deaths of Richie Valens, Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper. Of course, the last verse changes the tone:

I met a girl who sang the blues and I asked her for some happy news,
But she just smiled and turned away.
I went down to the local store, where I’d heard that music years before
But the man there said the music wouldn’t play.
And in the streets the children screamed, the lovers cried and the poets dreamed,
But not a word was spoken, the church bells all were broken.
And the three men I admire most, the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost
They caught the last train for the coast the day the music died.

68

Lyle Lovett: Creeps Like Me. And probably a lot more - I’ve just got a mental block right now.

69

Tori Amos (of course), sounding cheerful for once with – well, admittedly it’s one of her less depressing songs, but still, Happy Phantom, a song about a girl merrily contemplating being dead and ghosting around:

Or will I see you, dear, and wish I could come back
You found a girl that you could truly love again
Will you still call for me when she falls asleep?
Or do we soon forget the things we cannot see?

There’s more that haven’t been said here but I can’t bring them to mind.

70

MASH theme song “Suicide is Painless”

71

Off the top of my head, there’s I Can’t Stand Losing by The Police and Angel Eyes by Abba.

72

I always thought Suzanne Vega’s Luca was a pretty bouncy tune. Unfortunately, now it always reminds me of a stand-up comic I saw on cable, who sang:

My name is Guido.
I live on the bottom floor.
I beat up Luca.

73

Warren Zevon’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me” is a rollicking romp about someone wallowing in self-pity.

74

Since we’re on Zevon, there’s always Excitable Boy. A nice bouncy tune with lyrics that include:
And he raped her and killed her, then he took her home

75

Charlie Brown (Why’s everybody always picking on me?)
Get A Job (sha na na na sha na na na)
Wake Up Little Susie

76

Why am I not surprised that I’m the first to mention this one:

MMMBop by Hanson

No, really. Perhaps the most cheerful song to hit the charts in the last decade is all about how our loved ones can, and will, die at any moment:

They wrote this when the average age of the band members was about eight!

77

Actually Hanson has a few songs that qualify. One of my favorites is a nice little ditty off of the Underneath album called Misery.

Ouch.

78

I saw this and thought of “William Bloat” by the Clancy Brothers. Looking over some of my other Irish and Scottish albums, I would add “The Gentleman Soldier” (try the Pogues version), which isn’t at all a happy story from the girl’s point of view.

Speaking of the Pogues, try “Dark Streets of London” or “Sitting on Top of the World”.

79

I immediately thought of the band “Cherry Poppin’ Daddies” of “Zoot Suit Riot” fame. Almost all of their stuff is manically happy swing stuff with really downbeat lyrics. For example, there’s the melodically upbeat “Drunk Daddy” that goes:

Mamma married a big asshole, whiskey bottles on the floor
He just keeps on watchin’ TV, stepchild tired of being poor
Kitchen smells like rotten garbage
I can’t chew my food my face is sore
Momma didn’t come home last evening
Neighbors say that she’s a whore
some folks never want for nuthin’
I’m, a worn out hand me down
Stupid rich kid gets me angry
Lord I’m gonna cut him down
Now I’m grown up same old story
At 21 I fell in love
She left me just like the others
Jesus why’d you curse my love?

Drunk daddy broke my fingers
Drunk daddy done kicked my head
Drunk daddy smashed my sister
Turned my whole world red

80

Jeez, can’t believe I forgot Love Will Tear Us Apart, but Joy Division. Incongruent, right down to the name. Bizarre Love Triangle, by the remnants of J.D., is another bouncy tune about miserable things.