As I often do, I was taking myself down the rabbit hole of YouTube the other evening. You know, that thing where you play a tune, and then they suggest another, and suddenly an hour has passed. A song I really enjoyed got me thinking: it had happiness in its title, and I thought that might be a good theme for a Tuesday. I checked back through my notes and found that I have previously played two sets of happy songs, but not one specifically devoted to happiness tunes. A plan formed, and I got to thinking about this. Fortunately I knew four more to go with the one that gave me the idea, so the only thing left to do was to put them into a running order. This is my happiness rabbit hole!

The only place I could possibly start is with the song that prompted this. I’m suspecting that this will be the only act in this set that you won’t have previously known:

The Heavy Heavy are a UK ‘Americana’ band, comprising the duo of Will Turner and Georgie Fuller, augmented as here by Frank Fogden, Tom Holder, and Joe Bordenaro. Happiness is a track from their debut album, One Of A Kind, which came out last September. They also released an EP, Life And Life Only, in 2023 – its original six tracks have now been expanded to a full album length eleven in a reissue. Information on them is a little hard to come by, as they haven’t yet been deemed worthy of a Wikipedia page, but I can tell you that the album has been described as having a retro 60s/70s feel, to add to their Americana basics. They are based in Brighton, here in the UK, but have been paying their dues in touring a lot, particularly in the US. I really like their music and am following their Facebook page to keep up with what they are doing. If you are wondering about their name, it came from a David Bowie interview they were watching in which he described one of his albums as ‘heavy, heavy’ and they liked it for a band name. I hope we’ll be hearing much more of them: remember, you heard them here first!

Having started with something fairly recent I’m now going back to my teenage years – from retro 60s to the real thing. This is a little gem that I’ve loved ever since I first heard it:

As the clip shows, Happiness Runs was a track on Donovan’s seventh studio album, Barabajagal, which was released in the US in August 1969. It is, to be honest, a bit hit and miss as an album, but he always came up with a few beauties, and this is definitely one of them. The album peaked at #23 in the US and #22 in Canada but didn’t make the UK charts, for one very obvious reason: due to ongoing contractual disputes this was the fourth of his records which wasn’t released in the UK at the time. Big business getting in the way of music is criminal, in my view, but some of our DJs made up for that by playing the music on the radio, which is one of the ways I first heard this song. It has since been released here – in 2005! – and is part of my Apple Music library. My first actual hearing was by Mary Hopkin, who recorded it for her debut album, Postcard. I had that album but prefer Donovan’s own version.

[PS I’ve been advised by the lovely Nancy that this one didn’t work for her, but she has given me an alternative. So if that didn’t play for you, this might. Thank you, Nancy!]

Another song of beauty next. I struggled to find a live video of this one that is good enough to play, and this is the best I could get. The visuals aren’t great and come with a rolling newscast, but the sound is fine and as it is such a gorgeous song I didn’t want to leave it out:

Emmylou Harris and Mark Knopfler released Love And Happiness in April 2006 on their album All The Roadrunning, and then for some reason omitted it from the live version which came out later that year. The song was co-written by Emmylou with Kimmie Rhodes. This clip is clearly lifted from a tv broadcast, which explains the video quality and also why it was so hard for me to find one: if only it had been on the live album too! The album did well in chart terms, making #8 in the UK (going Gold) and #17 in the US, whilst also reaching the top ten in many other countries. All the Roadrunning was recorded sporadically over a seven-year period. On Thanksgiving evening in 1998, at a recording session in Nashville, the pair ran through some of Mark’s songs with Emmylou adding her vocals. The session sparked the idea for a collaborative album of duets. Emmylou later recalled, “When you combine two unique voices it creates a third, phantom voice…. I love the third voice that Mark and I create. We noticed right away that our voices blended pretty effortlessly.” Further recording sessions took place in 2002 and 2004, with the pair supported by some of the best Nashville session players, and the record finally came out in 2006. I’m glad it did: I bought it at the time and still enjoy it now.

I played a song by this next act last week, but that isn’t going to stop me playing another of hers. This is also lovely:

During the pandemic Taylor Swift released two albums of stripped down, folk-based music. The first was Folklore, in July 2020, and the second, which came as a bit of a surprise, was Evermore, which came out less than five months later, in December 2020. Happiness was a track on the second of those which, like its predecessor, reached #1 in both the UK and the US, and also in numerous other countries including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. It went Platinum in those and many other countries too. Taylor has been accused of not being able to sing, and has referenced that in her lyrics: if you don’t know these albums I suggest you take a listen, as they are beautifully sung and her lyrics are showing remarkable maturity, given that she had only just turned 30 when she wrote them.

I hadn’t intended this to be a set of mostly gentle songs, but that seems to be the way it is turning out. But hey, you wouldn’t have expected Ken Dodd or Helen Shapiro, would you? I’m closing with one which is anything but gentle, though! For those who know my musical tastes, this is the track you must have been expecting:

As the clip shows, The Beatles included Happiness Is A Warm Gun on their eponymous double album, which is probably better known as The White Album. This was released in November 1968, went to #1 just about everywhere, and has sold many millions – 12m in the US alone, where it went 24x Platinum. This track was written by John Lennon, who took its title from an article in the American Rifleman magazine, which George Martin had happened to leave in the recording studio. Quite what George Martin was doing with this hasn’t been explained, as even in those days gun ownership was far less prevalent in the UK than the US, and we didn’t have any of their misconceptions that we had a legal right to own guns. John has explained that he didn’t encourage shooting, and that the lyrics were a double entendre for sex with Yoko, the only ‘shooting’ in which he wanted to engage. A touch ironic, sadly, given how he died. But it is still a great song, from one of the best albums ever made.

That’s it for this week’s five tunes. A mostly gentle, reflective set, and quite possibly containing several that you might not have previously known. But that’s part of the fun for me: I love introducing you to the further flung recesses of my musical memories by playing some of the music I love! I hope you’ve enjoyed them.

Enjoy your week, and I’ll see you again soon. 😊