If you play it without lyrics to people who don’t already know the song, then… just about everyone.
This, hands down. The lyrics, “you better run, run, run, outrun my gun…you better run better run, faster than my bullet”, sung in a cheerful, schoolyard melody is creepy to the Nth degree.
I was going to say, lyrics aside (and I never really listened to them much beyond “she’s a brick and I’m drowning slowly” which clued me into it not being a joyful song, though I had no idea until just now that it was about an abortion, despite the thousand times I’ve heard it) it’s a fairly uplifting, celebratory tune.
Pumped Up Kicks was the first song that came to my mind in this thread. I also hate that song for some inexplicable reason.
Would 99 Luftballons/99 Red Balloons qualify. Nuclear annihilation never sounded jollier! (Well, the German and English versions have slightly different narratives, but they all end unhappily.)
The '59 Sound by The Gaslight Anthem is a fun, upbeat rock song about a teenager dying in a car crash. There’s several songs by them that could fit this thread, as you might expect from a band strongly influenced by Springsteen.
I think the thread is about pop songs, that’s my point.
Blues has sad songs with a happy tone sometimes, and sad songs with a true sad tone sometimes. Which I guess reflects the reality of people’s lives.
Maybe pop music is not supposed to reflect reality - maybe the unbalance is intended.
The other day in a very different thread I argued that no one should expect (or even want) The Simpsons to show a fair or balanced picture of life. One assumption behind what I said is that there are other TV shows, and those other shows balance out what The Simpsons is like.
I just never quite got it through my head that the entire category of pop music was this limited. Maybe I musically live under a rock.
Yeah but it’s not an upbeat song. It’s slow and in a minor key and everything.
I’m surprised that nobody has mentioned Barry Manilow’s “Copacabana”, with a light, bouncy tune and sad lyrics:
“She sits there so refined, and drinks herself half-blind
She lost her youth and she lost her Tony
Now she’s lost her mind”
???. It’s in D major. There’s one minor chord that I hear in there, and that’s in the bridge/prechorus.
Oh, and for fun, since we were talking about it in another thread, it’s another example of a song based on the I-IV progression (the verses are all D and G major chords.)
I hate those kind of songs. Lifeless and boring! Or something.
There seems to be a “thing” some songs have, whatever it is that gives some people the impression that they’re in minor keys when in fact they’re solidly major. I’ve heard people say other pretty-much-100%-major-chord songs were minor too. Not sure what it would be. Downward jumps in the melody? Whiny singers? 
IDK.
At least with that one you could say it has a dramatic reason for being that way, with the music reflecting the all-flash all-showbiz life of Lola, “the show must go on” etc. Losing your mind? Kick higher, smile brighter…
Hey, maybe that’s what makes people erroneously think minor. The downwards pull of the IV (with fewer sharps than the I) and not much V (more sharps) to balance it.
Every song by Cher post-Sonny/pre-'80s?
“Country Death Song” by the Violent Femmes is a first-person account of a man going crazy and pushing his daughter to her death, then feeling so remorseful that he’s decided to commit suicide.
Thank you for all of the examples. I guess I’ll have to change my plan to drive around today cheerfully whistling “The Last Kiss”. However, I offer Charles Trenet’s song Je chante (I Sing). You who are wondering why he sounds so cheerful could translate the lyrics, particularly starting with “Non, ficelle”, I guess accurate enough here, with slight variations on other pages.
Playboy readers may recognize another Phil Ochs song, The Highwayman. (Noyes’s complete poem is here.) And one more, Gloria Trevi’s version of El Último beso. Yes, this version isn’t that cheerful-sounding, but Gloria does cheer me up.
Clapton’s Promises
How about the Beach Boys’ happy rendition of Help Me Rhonda?
Well since she put me down I’ve been out doin’ in my head
I come in late at night and in the mornin’ I just lay in bed
. . .
She was gonna be my wife
And I was gonna be her man
(Oh Rhonda)
But she let another guy come between us
And it shattered our plans
I don’t think that’s it. I-IV usually sounds pretty happy and major, I think. (I don’t know what you mean by more and fewer sharps in that context. In this song, that happens to be so, but that’s just an accident of it being in the key of D. Key of C , they both have no sharps. There’s nothing particularly special about a sharp.) To me, with that song, it may more be the slow pacing and the voicing of the broken chords. The D chord does this little thing where it goes down from the third to the second, and the G chord avoids the third and does this thing with the 6th and 9th/2nd, so it might not be as obviously “major” as it would if it was just a broken G chord.
That said, to me, without the words, it sounds like it should be an uplifting love ballad. Maybe a bit introspective, but it does sound more “up” than the lyrics would suggest. However, plenty of sad/depressing songs are written in major keys.
Mea culpa. I am absolutely shit at music theory.
Still, ain’t an upbeat song