The first Beach Boys song I considered for this list of favorite “happy” songs was ‘God Only Knows.’ It’s probably my favorite of theirs. But I quickly realized that it’s pretty melancholy as love songs go.

So I went with my backup, another favorite of mine, ‘Wouldn’t It Be Nice?’ You could argue that this song is bittersweet as well — after all, it’s about a couple that can’t be together the way they want to be — but it’s musically exuberant.

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Often on YouTube, I’ll see comments on song clips that read something like “This song was written about my life!” or “This describes exactly how I feel about [fill in the blank].”

Plenty of people out there, it seems, see their own feelings and experiences in the lyrics of songs they love.

I almost never do.

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