The tune of I Am a Rock is pretty upbeat and peppy-but the lyrics are cynical and depressing. I can just imagine the singer bursting into tears after the song ends.
I have no need of friendship
Friendship causes pain
It’s laughter and it’s loving I disdain
Love Will Tear Us Apart sounds bouncy to you? I do agree with Bizarre Love Triangle, though, and would add “Blue Monday” to that.
BTW, the name “Joy Division” comes from a novel about Nazi sex slaves.
A lot of great songs have been mentioned, but I don’t think some of them are quite what the OP had in mind. They may be lyrically maudlin, but not necessarily up-beat musically.
That said, I submit one of the happiest sounding songs of all; Bobby McFerrrin’s solo a cappella classic, Don’t Worry, Be Happy
*Here’s a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note-for-note
Don’t worry, be happy
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry, you make it double
Don’t worry…
Ain’t got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don’t worry…
The landlord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don’t worry…
Ain’t got no cash, ain’t got no style
Ain’t got no gal to make you smile
But don’t …
'Cause when you’re worried, your face will frown
And that will bring everybody down
So don’t…
Now there, is this song I wrote
I hope you learned it note-for-note, like good little children
Don’t…
A-listen to a-what I say
In your life, expect some trouble
When you worry you make it double
…worry…*
I’ll go with the obvious “It’s the End of The World As We Know It” and another Fishbone song “Freddie’s Dead”. I’d say that a lot of Fishbone applies.
Franky Perez, who had a mainstream hit (kinda) with Something Crazy, wrote an incredibly catchy and upbeat song that is quite depressing if you listen to the lyrics. It’s called Cecilia and it’s about an alcoholic woman living on the streets.
*She tells a story of a shotgun wedding
and the birth of a stillborn child
She was only thirteen
her little body wasn’t ready
Babies watching babies die.
Hey ay ay ay Cecilia
Don’t you know the streets will kill ya
Don’t you know your momma misses ya
Don’t ya know, don’t ya know.*
Something Crazy is depressing in its own right, but it isn’t upbeat.
It’s a sweet ballad about murdering children and raping mothers. The tune sounds like something Frankie Avalon would have sung to Annette Funicello, but the words:
Not the way Metallica did it, it doesn’t. :smack: 
How about “Scarborough Fair”? Oh, it sounds like a cute li’l wistful love song, until you figure out that what he’s asking of his “true love” is pretty much impossible.
I’m not sure Weird Al’s “One More Minute With You” qualifies for this thread, but it’s niftily incongruous.
hmmm… Beyond the subset of songs that sound “up” until you listen closely, the upbeat but dark song is one of the great elements of rock. Think of Blue Oyster Cult’s “Godzilla,” or The Rolling Stones’ (iirc) “Mother’s Little Helper.”
That particular combination of musical mood & lyrical theme is somehow especially attractive. The Police recorded “Shadows in the Rain” as a dark depressing mope. It sucked. Sting later redid it as an upbeat jazz number, which improved it immensely.
On last year’s Rock Star:INXS, the original songs by the two finalists were both in that vein:
Marty Casey’s “Trees”
It’ll be you & me
up in the trees
& the forest will give us the answers.
It’ll be you & I
up in the sky
It’s a combination for disaster.
JD Fortune’s “It Ain’t Pretty”:
*It ain’t pretty
after the show
It ain’t pretty when the Pretty leaves you
with no place to go…
But this is the ride
and this is the show
It ain’t pretty*
Simon & Garfunkel’s The Sun is Burning seems to qualify.
Well, not so much “mauldin” as “incomprehensible horror,” but it’s the same principle and execution.
Paul Simon’s Celia too. Simon seems to have written quite a number of these.
“For Now” from the musical Avenue Q says essentially that everything in life, no matter how much you love or hate it, is not going to last forever. Which is uplifting or depressing, depending how you look at it, but the music is very bouncy and happy in general.
“The FCC Song” by Eric Idle which you can download free is about how the government has done some pretty crappy things, but sounds quite cheerful.
Thene there’s “Vicky Verky,” a song by Squeeze.
It’s a perky, catchy, uptempo song about a 14 year old girl who has an abortion while her boyfriend is in Borstal, the British juvenile prison.
I just busted out some of my old CDs and found another one: The Lines You Amend by Sloan.
No one’s mentioned You Are My Sunshine yet? I’m stunned.
It’s the End of the World as We Know it.
Another great Springsteen song is Cadillac Ranch. Sounds like a typical rocking Bruce tune, except the Cadillac he is talking about is a hearse.
There are probably many folk tunes, especially Irish folk tunes, which are upbeat and bouncy but are about death and suffering.
There is a song by Dido, not really that upbeat because it is by Dido afterall, but, the song Here with Me, I’ve always thought is sung by a ghost. A dead woman who won’t rest till her lover is dead as well.
There’s two that come to mind off the top of my head (well, almost three)
*Lonely Boy * by Andrew Gold
He was born on a summer day 1951
And with a slap of a hand
He landed as an only son
His mother and father said what a lovely boy
We’ll teach him what we learned
Ah yes just what we learned
We’ll dress him up warmly and
We’ll send him to school
It’ll teach him how to fight
To be nobody’s fool
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
In the summer of '53 his mother
Brought him a sister
And she told him we must attend to her needs
She’s so much younger than you
Well he ran down the hall and he cried
Oh how could his parents have lied
When they said he was an only son
He thought he was the only one
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Oh what a lonely boy
Goodbye mama, goodbye to you
Goodbye papa I’m pushing on through
He left home on a winter day 1969
And he hoped to find all the love
He had lost in that earlier time
Well his sister grew up
And she married a man
He gave her a son
Ah yes a lovely son
They dressed him up warmly
They sent him to school
It taught him how to fight
To be nobody’s fool
It was such a catchy song with a great chorus “hook”. But it’s pretty depressing.
There’s at least a couple songs from the movie “Phantom of the Paradise” which would qualify (anyone remember that movie? It’s one of my all-time faves), but I nominate Special to Me
Caught up in your wheelin’ dealin’ you’ve got no time left for simple feelin’
I thought I knew you but I didn’t know you at all
Trapped inside your world of worry you miss so much when you always hurry
Well slow down baby you’ll only get hurt if you fall
Well you told me one time that you’d be somebody
That you weren’t workin’ just to survive
But you’re workin’ so hard that you don’t even know you’re alive
Workin’ so hard to be somebody special not working just to survive
Well you’re special to me babe but what I don’t see babe is
Where you go once you arrive
Where we go once we arrive
Damn all evil that takes possession until your pipe dreams become obsessions
They scare me baby and we should have nothing to fear
I’m no child but I can’t help wonder it seems like some kind of spell you’re under
You’re listnin’ baby but somehow you don’t really hear
Well you told me one time that you’d be somebody
That you weren’t workin’ just to survive
But you’re workin’ so hard that you don’t even know you’re alive
Workin’ so hard to be somebody special not working just to survive
Well you’re special to me babe but what I don’t see babe is
Where you go once you arrive
Where we go once we arrive
That’s why I specified the Misfits original version.
Try anything by Reel Big Fish pretty much fits the bill
“The Way” by one hit wonder Fastball qualifies:
“They made up their minds
And they started packing
They left before the sun came up that day
An exit to eternal summer slacking
But where were they going
Without ever knowing the way?”
One that comes to mind is Aussie songwriter/singer Paul Kelly’s Sweet Guy, an up tempo pop/rock song about wife beating, sung from the perspective of the woman.
As for
What’s the difference between the two? They sound pretty much exactly the same to me, except that Danzig has a better voice.