I always felt guilty dancing to “All She Wants To Do Is Dance”–but I did.
“Mack the Knife”–anybody’s version.
There were a whole slew of bright happy breakup songs in the ‘60s. Four Seasons’ “Opus 17,” for instance, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do”(very bouncy), “You Don’t Have To Paint Me a Picture,” “Help Me Rhonda,” as opposed to a bunch of really drippy, dismal-sounding love songs (for example, “Hey Paula” was the most depressing love song ever, bleh!). Of course I was pretty young at the time but hey, breaking up sounded a LOT more fun than “Going to the Chapel” at least to me.
The Minus 5’s album of the same name is full of upbeat, cheery music with dark titles (i.e. “Cemetery Row”, “Leftover Life To Kill”, “My Life As A Creep”) and even darker lyrics.*
*sample from “Bought A Rope”:
Let’s set the date for the funeral parade
'cause I can’t wait to be forgiven
And I’ll be there like a pillow in the snow
that covers the fair like J.Lo linen
I never want to let you go
I never want to let you go
I never want to let you go
and that’s why I bought this rope
Bought a rope
As I understand it, the line hints at the fading artistic relevance of Elvis who had become overshadowed by Bob Dylan (the jester). Not my own interpretation, but it’s a valid speculation.
My thing about sharps was that keys (not chords) with more sharps - or fewer flats - sound brighter and subjectively sort of give an upwards pull, while keys with fewer sharps/more flats kind of do the opposite. All other things being equal (which they rarely are), a song that goes I-V-I-V a lot will sound brighter than a song that goes I-IV-I-IV.
Maybe taking it further can show it more easily - if your song is in D and you use a C major chord, the C chord can sound like a dark place - use an E major and it seems brighter by comparison.
It’s which direction you’re going on the circle of fifths.
Reputedly the chorus was originally inspired by a news report of someone threatening to jump off a bridge. But yeah, if the story is true, you can’t exactly tell from the song as released.
Also: “When Will You Die” which is cheery and upbeat and all about how much everyone hates the person in question and hopes they die soon.
*You’re insane
You are bad
You wreck everything you touch
And you’re a sociopath
But there’s one thing
That everyone’s wondering
When will you die?
Schoolchildren stay at home (yeah)
And all the banks will close (yeah)
Each year we’ll mark the date (yeah)
On which we celebrate (yeaah) *
On the same theme there are a lot of peppy versions of “Miss Otis Regrets”, Miss Otis regretting that she can’t come to lunch today because she shot her lover and then was dragged from her jail cell by a lynch mob and hanged. Fun stuff.
My favorite Paxton song remains “Thank You Republic Airlines” which is insanely catchy but is about how absolutely furious Paxton is that Republic Airlines broke his guitar.
For you took it as a challenge when I turned in my case
and you saw the fragile stickers glued all over the place:
May a team of mad flamenco dancers do to your face
What you did to the neck on my guitar!
Yes! And the vaguely threatening but totally upbeat “Hey Little Girl” with its bouncy little bridge. Covered by many but I think of the version by Syndicate of Sound. With banjos! Banjos make everything bouncier.
OK, can’t exactly tell, but it’s easy to see (at least if you want to see it, I thought it was obvious) that for some reason the chorus lyrics of that song don’t necessarily match the verse lyrics. Not matching proves nothing though.
It’s all fairly arbitrary. Is a song notated in C# major “brighter” than one in Db major? (It’s the same key in our equal tempered system.) That’s just notational.
But yes, there is some sort of idea that if you go counterclockwise around the circle of fifth vs clockwise around the circle of fifths, one sounds “brighter” and the other “darker.” I just don’t really feel that. That said, I don’t find plagal cadences (IV-I) to be dark or minor sounding at all. I just find it more, I dunno, “pop” sounding or something while the perfect/authentic cadence, V7-I, sounds more "classical"or “jazz” to my ears. The IV-I maybe not as forceful, but that’s not so much to do with the sharps, but rather that the V7 has the tritone (third and seventh) that wants to resolve to the tonic and third. That’s probably what you mean by “upward pull,” I think. That’s a function not of key or accidentals, but one of “tendency tones.”
Boom Boom Boom by The Igaunas. When you listen to the lyrics you can see why it was used in a Homicide: Life on the Streets episode:
He walked the street to the corner liquor store
Got some cigarettes and wine and he backed out the door
It didn’t work out quite like he thought it would
Now he’s back page news down in the neighborhood
And it’s boom boom boom
Boom boom boom
Boom boom all night long
Boom boom boom
Boom boom boom
Boom boom all night long
