Come On, Get Happy

I confess that I have been a little moody lately. Okay, more than a little. The highlight of my day yesterday was when I set my mocha light frappuccino on the edge of the table at the Riverwalk Starbucks, and it landed perfectly upside down on the ground, like a stellar flip cup performance. Too bad I hadn't taken a single sip before this happened. I still managed to salvage about a third of it, and I did drink it, out of pure desperation.

When it comes to feeling down, I turn to music if I can. Sometimes there is a part of me that just wants to feel sorry for myself, and that's when I put in something syrupy sad like a little Josh Groban. Other times, however, it's just time to pick myself up and play something that makes me deliriously happy. And I look to three tunes to accomplish this.

1. The Girl From Ipanema. Who doesn't know this song? It seems like it's been around forever. But I was reintroduced to it when I guy I dated in D.C., Josh, pulled it out of his CD collection in his car one day. He told me that he and his friends always put that in the CD player when one of them was pissed off, and it instantly cheered everyone up. I could see exactly what he meant. Normally listening to a favorite song of a guy who dumped me would cause me to wallow in self pity. But "The Girl From Ipanema" puts a smile on my face every time.

2. Freedom! 90. If you know me well, you know that I have a mild (very mild) obsession with George Michael. There are so many great George Michael songs, including the now mostly forgotten "One More Try" (very big at the Van Hoosen after school dance when I was in the 8th grade, but I think I've only heard it on the radio about five times in the twenty years since). I may not be a supermodel, like the women in the famous Freedom! video, but whenever I hear this song, I just want to get up and dance. It makes me think of my friend Michelle's bachelorette party and good times at the Adams Mill when I first moved to D.C. It just makes me happy.

3. Never Wanna F'n See You Again. This is the granddaddy of them all. It's a lesser known song, and probably only really recognized amongst those of us in college in the great state of Indiana in the 1990s. The chorus to this song would never make it on the radio because censoring it just doesn't have the same impact. I'll give you a half censored version anyway: "No, I never wanna f'n see you again. You've always been a bitch. Since I can't remember when. You irritate my brain. You're driving me insane. No, I never wanna f'n see you again. Why do you have to be such a bitch?" I can't explain what it is about this song, but the melody is so hoedown happy, and to have it go with these lyrics, where you know Rich Hardesty is smiling as he sings - it is everything that is right about swearing. Sometimes, it just makes you feel better. Proof of this, to me, was when I went on a Spring Break trip in law school to Vegas, Phoenix, and Mexico with eight of my classmates. And when we were all bickering in the van en route somewhere, singing along to this song was the only thing that could bring us all back together. In a word: awesome.