Far Out 40: The happiest pop songs of all time
People have known for a long time that music elicits full-bodied responses from deep within. While it might have taken centuries for science to develop enough to understand what causes the body to respond to sonics in myriad profound ways, we now know exactly why everyone from The Beatles to Chappell Roan and even PSY have unlocked our minds.
One of music’s greatest strengths is it’s subjectivity, meaning that one listener’s favourite aural treat is another’s trifle. Although subcultures seem to be dying out, even when they divided up the musical realm into more distinct camps, it was never black and white. Allegedly, Glen Matlock was thrown out of punk pioneers the Sex Pistols for listening to The Beatles, and elsewhere, Melvin’s frontman Buzz Osborne recently maintained that he continued to listen to classic rock throughout his life, despite grunge deeming it so not cool anymore. We all have varied tastes.
Even myself, a natural miser who generally likes the heavier side of music, can find I am emotionally undone by the heady hyperpop sound of Caroline Polachek or the immense nostalgia of hits from the turn of the millennium. There’s science behind this, too, and different sorts of music can immensely change a listener’s mood.
We all have specific songs for certain moods and situations, whether it be a heavy session in the gym, a moment of emotional reflection, or the pure excitement of getting ready to go out and see your friends you haven’t seen in a minute. Concentrating on the latter, a genuinely sunny situation, according to PRS, research shows that happy, upbeat music causes our brains to produce neurotransmitter chemicals like dopamine and serotonin, which prompts feelings of joy, perfect before a reunion.
Happy music can be so effective on mood and mental health because dopamine, known as the “feel-good hormone,” triggers the brain’s pleasure and reward function. This means it positively arouses us psychologically and physiologically, energising us. It was even proved in 2001 by neuroscientists Anne Blood and Robert Zatorre at Montreal’s McGill University that pleasurable music activated the brain regions of the limbic and paralimbic areas, which are connected to euphoric reward responses such as what we get from good food, drugs and sex. This feeling we all know, like a warm wave coming over our brain when listening to happy music, is a dopamine rush.
Given that happy music has the power to transform a listener’s mood, we’ve listed 40 of the happiest pop songs of all time to give readers a slice of sun amid the autumn cold. From classics to contemporary pop and even a few forgotten bangers from years gone by, these happy pop songs will bring dopamine in floods.
Far Out Magazine’s full list of the happiest pop songs:
- CMAT – ‘Have Fun!’
- Chappell Roan – ‘Hot To Go!’
- Gorillaz – ‘Feel Good Inc.’
- The Cure – ‘Friday I’m in Love’
- Prince – ‘Let’s Go Crazy’
- New Radicals – ‘You Get What You Give’
- Magdalena Bay – ‘Image’
- Queen – ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’
- KC and the Sunshine Band – ‘Give It Up’
- Junior Senior – ‘Move Your Feet’
- Hall and Oates – ‘You Make My Dreams’
- Caroline Polachek – ‘Welcome to My Island’
- The Beach Boys – ‘Good Vibrations’
- Supergrass – ‘Pumping on Your Stereo’
- Belinda Carlisle – ‘Heaven is a Place on Earth’
- Stardust – ‘Music Sounds Better With You’
- The Beatles – ‘Here Comes the Sun’
- Charli XCX – ‘Von Dutch’
- All Saints – ‘Pure Shores’
- Pulp – ‘Common People’
- Caesers – ‘Jerk It Out’
- The Vines – ‘Get Free’
- The Turtles – ‘Happy Together’
- Empire of the Sun – ‘Walking on a Dream’
- MGMT – ‘Electric Feel’
- Diana Ross – ‘I’m Coming Out’
- Third Eye Blind – ‘Semi-Charmed Life’
- New Order – ‘World In Motion’
- Chumbawamba – ‘Tubthumping’
- Len – ‘Steal My Sunshine’
- OPM – ‘Heaven is a Halfpipe’
- Outkast – ‘Hey Ya!’
- David Gray – ‘Babylon’
- ELO – ‘Mr Blue Sky’
- The Monkees – ‘I’m a Believer’
- Pink Floyd – ‘Fearless’
- Faces – ‘Ooh La La’
- Little Richard – ‘Long Tall Sally’
- Wings – ‘Jet’
- Wheatus – ‘Teenage Dirtbag’
