Happy Songs Are Bad For You

Has anyone seen this ad yet? It's playing in some movie theaters.



That tune comes from Bugsy Malone, a old-style gangster movie in which children or adolescents play all the roles. Oddly enough, given the way my mind and heart work, I've never seen the picture all the way through, but I did see the last few minutes on television once, where all the kids sing that song after a pie fight.

You give a little love and it all comes back to you
(Da da da da da da da)
You're gonna be remembered for the things that you say and do
(Da da da da da da da)

I always thought it was a pretty song, especially with all those children singing it, but when I saw that ad with the thug going around doing favors for people and getting a huge Broadway number going behind him, I just about started to cry.

I walked around with a broken heart for a few days, and then for some reason I remembered another song from when I was a kid. Any other greybeards from the previous age of the world remember Pete Seeger?

Here's another force from the Dark Ages who could just about break your heart. When I was a kid going to summer camp, we sang songs that he popularized whenever we got the chance. I had some of his records, too, and whatever he sang it sounded like the Golden Age was going to be here any minute. And my God, he was wrong.

On one of his records for children (of which he made a couple thousand, seemed like), he did a version of Frog Went a-Courtin' in which he sounded about as happy as a person could. The chorus he used, from an old British version of the song, went like this:

Here's to cheddar, here's to cheese,
Here's to the pears and the apple trees,
And here's to the lovely straw-berries
Ding, dang, dong, go the wedding bells.

As I say, that song came to my mind, and that did it. I haven't cried for years, but I cried my eyes out.

Why? Well, near as I can tell, it's because those songs are both so optimistic, and the world just doesn't operate the way they say it does. You give a little love and it all comes back to you, huh? You're gonna be remembered for the things that you say and do? Baloney. You give a little love and sometimes you get kicked in the teeth, and you're gonna be remembered for the accidents in your life.

As for the frog song, it says that all you need is something to eat, some beauty and some love, but everybody knows that all those things are in short supply these days. And they were much more rare in previous ages.

It's the contrast between the joy in those songs and the pain in life that gets to me. And if you think I'm being hypersensitive, tell someone else.

Benshlomo says, If a happy song makes you sad, you're in trouble.