After fully embracing the blues in our first playlist of 2025, reflecting on what a dismal, torturous month January can be - now we look forward to February and beyond with a sense of (hopefully not misguided) hope and anticipation.....
So, we bring you ten fine and uplifting tunes all about loving life and generally being joyous and happy. We're going to make 2025 work gosh darn it!
1. Louis Armstrong: What A Wonderful World
Okay, it is not a big dance number to start, but what a rousing tune to get us going. This one was written by Bob Thiele (credited as George Douglas) and George David Weiss in 1967. Recorded by Louis Armstrong, it was a big hit for him in the UK in 1968, but did poorly in the US because Larry Newton of ABC Records didn't like it and so wouldn't back it and promote it (it did better in 1988 when re-released after being used in the movie Good Morning Vietnam). It was written as something of an antidote in a decade of national trauma - JFK's assassination, the cold war, the war in Vietnam etc. Newton's issue was that Armstrong had just signed for the label and he was hoping for a big, upbeat swinging number, rather than the restrained, slow-paced classic tune we all know and love (the fact that everyone knows this song and no one remembers Larry Newton, suggests he perhaps didn't know what he was talking about).
Louis Armstrong: What A Wonderful World (Live at the BBC, 1968)
2. Crowded House: Love This Life
We're still pretty low key so far, but stick with us. Crowded House were under pressure to recreate the success of their debut album - so much so that they joked about calling the next one Mediocre Follow-Up (it was eventually called Temple Of Low Men). Neil Finn said in 1988 of this particular song - "Mitchell Froom hates it when there’s something that’s really naively up. He likes to have a bitter comment in there. At the end of Love This Life, I had originally written ‘Love them even if they hate you’ as a line. It’s quite a noble sort of thought. Doesn’t matter what they think of you, turn the other cheek. Mitchell suggested changing it to ‘even if you think that I hate you,’ which is very bitter. It’s like you just set up this whole song and then all of a sudden, it’s got a twist. It’s like maybe I’m contemptuous of everybody. I allowed him to talk me into it.” Interestingly (or not) the fragment of one of the lines which includes "Tongue in the mail," was used as the name of their fan club.
Crowded House: Love This Life (Audio only)
3. Judy Garland: Get Happy
This was the first song written by Harold Arlen (music) and Ted Koehler (lyrics) and was first performed by Ruth Etting in the 1930 Nine-Fifteen Review. Judy Garland recorded what is probably the most well known version, for her last MGM film, Summer Stock (with Gene Kelly), in 1950. She would regularly perform it live for the remainder of her performing career. Judy Garland, in her tragically short life, achieved so much in film, stage and music - at 39, she was the youngest (and first female) to get the Cecil B DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in the film industry.
Judy Garland: Get Happy (From the 1950 film Summer Stock)
4. Katrina & The Waves: Walking On Sunshine
This was written by Waves guitarist Kimberley Rew, a one time member of Canterbury scenesters, the Soft Boys, in the late 70's. This song originally appeared as the title track on their 1983 debut album, but it is the re-recorded 1985 version for their eponymously title third album, which is best known. Released as the second single, it hit the Top10 in the US, UK and Australia. Rew later told the Guardian, "I'd love to say Walking on Sunshine relates to a significant event in my life, like walking out of my front door, seeing a comet and being inspired, but it's just a piece of simple fun, an optimistic song, despite us not being outstandingly cheery people. We were a typical young band, insecure and pessimistic. We didn't have big hair and didn't look anything like a Motown-influenced group. We didn't have any credibility or a fanbase in awe of our mystique. We were a second-on-the-bill-at-a-festival-in-Germany pop band. But we had this song." The rest of the band were initially not all that keen on it, thinking it wasn't really their style, but it certainly served them well.
Katrina & The Waves: Walking On Sunshine (Official music video)
5. One Republic: Good Life
This was the third single from the second album, Waking Up, by Colorado Springs' pop-rock band One Republic. On release in 2010, it hit the US Top 10. Unusually they produced a number of radio edits of the song that changed the lyric in the line "my friends in [city/state] they don't know, where I've been." to suit the market it was being played in. As high praise, Rolling Stone had it in their Top 15 Whistling Songs of all time!
One Republic: Good Life (Official music video)
6. Bill Withers: Lovely Day
Bill Withers served nine years in the US Navy (from aged 17), during which time he started to write songs. This one was written in 1977 by Withers and Skip Scarborough and is featured on his sixth album, Menagerie. The eighteen second sustained note that Withers holds towards the end of the tune, is one of the longest recorded on an American pop record. Interestingly, the guitarist on this record was none other than Ray Parker Jr, who of course became famous for his Ghostbusters theme song.
Bill Withers: Lovely Day (Music video)
7. Inner City: Good Life
Here is the second song called Good Life for you. Kevin Saunderson, dance DJ and record producer, had been a member of the Belleville Three (named after the Detroit suburb they grew up in), often credited as one of the originators of techno. In the late 80's, he teamed up with singer Paris Grey to form Inner City. Having already had a hit with Big Fun, they followed that up with this one, which would give them a UK Top10 hit. Saunderson wrote the music using just a synth and drum machine in his apartment, with Grey given the direction to give the vocals the same vibe as on the first record. Music & Media magazine said that it was, "funky and smouldering."
Inner City: Good Life (Official music video)
8. Bobby McFerrin: Don't Worry, Be Happy
If nothing else, Don't Worry, Be Happy, is notable as being the first ever acapella song to top the Billboard charts in 1988, knocking Sweet Child O' Mine off the top spot. Bobby McFerrin was the son of Robert McFerrin, an operatic baritone, who became the first black man to sing with the Metropolitan Opera. He worked for a long time perfecting his vocal style and didn't put out an album until his eponymously titled debut in 1982 (aged 31). Don't Worry is taken from his fourth record, Simple Pleasures, and also featured in the Tom Cruise movie, Cocktail.
Bobby McFerrin: Don't Worry, Be Happy (Official music video)
9. U2: Beautiful Day
Beautiful Day was the opening track on U2's tenth LP, All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000), and saw them sonically using a sound that, in part, harked back to that of the early 80's output. Bono said that the song was about still being able to find joy, even when you have lost everything. As the song progressed, it was seen as just being little more than a basic rock song with plenty of the past and not enough of the future about it. So, producers Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois spent some time pulling together some extra ideas, using a synth, drum machine and Lanois playing guitar chords a third above the root of what the Edge had already laid down (no, I don't know what that means either). When the band came back into the studio, they were spurred on to create what we now hear as the end result.
U2: Beautiful Day (Live at Slane Castle, 2001)
10. Pharrell Williams: Happy
Happy is, of course, the banging upbeat neo-soul classic, that was released as a single both from the Despicable Me soundtrack, and Pharrell Williams' second album, Girl. It became a number one in 24 countries, and by the end of 2014 (a year after it was released) it had sold a staggering 8 million copies in the US and UK alone. Williams, who had started out in rock-rap band N.E.R.D. and had also just worked on Daft Punk's Random Access Memories (which includes Get Lucky), had written Happy with CeeLo Green in mind, but Green's label wasn't keen, and so Williams had it for himself.
But ten tracks wasn't enough - so here are two more joyous bangers for your enjoyment!
11. Haircut One Hundred: Fantastic Day
This bright and breezy pop classic from 1982 just had to be included. This was the third and final single from their debut LP, Pelican West. David Hepworth in Smash Hits, was one of many reviewers who fell in love with the record saying, "he winning vocals, the sturdy, flexible rhythm section, creamy saxophone, the poignant, exhilarating and thoroughly British songs."
Haircut 100: Fantastic Day (Official music video)
12. Ricky Martin: Livin' La Vida Loca
We finish with an undisputed banger. Ricky Martin's self-titled fifth album was his first in English, and what a way to announce yourself to a wider audience. This monster hit gave Martin a number one hit in more than 20 countries, including five weeks atop the US chart, eight weeks on top in Canada, and three weeks in the UK (where he also became the first Puerto Rican to have a number one single). It's an irresistible song, that fuses together salsa with a surf-rock guitar, with Chuck Taylor describing it in Billboard magazine as, "so electrifying, so terrifically filled with life, that even folks at the retirement home down the street could get their groove on with couple spins."
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