The Happiest Song in the World

It’s a tie, so I’m going to break it up based on the time of the year.


For the month of December, it has to be:

Linus and Lucy

- from A Charlie Brown Christmas, by the Vince Guaraldi trio.


For the remaining eleven months of the calendar year, it has to be:

Here Comes the Sun

- from Abbey Road, written by George Harrison and performed by the Beatles.


What unbounded bliss and joy in both songs! The test is how expressive the dancing of little girls, those paragons of present-moment innocence, becomes when such music fills the air.


And as a personal, adult corollary …

The most happy album ever produced:

Van Halen’s 1984.

Based solely subjectively on a memory I have of Puerto Rico, August, 2007. The women had taken all the children somewhere else for the afternoon. Me and my buddy Steve the Pilot, a case of ice cold Medallion beer, 80 degree temps and cloudless blue skies, a football, and an in-ground swimming pool on a hundred-foot cliff overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. Eddie, Dave, Alex and Michael at their peak blasting through the outdoor surround-sound stereo system. It doesn’t get any better than that, before or since.