The origin of this song is an interesting story. We were in Key West circa 2009, living the dream. We were on the road, free of the “normal” world, surrounded by turquoise water and palm trees. By every definition, we were in paradise. I had my soulmate, I had my guitar, and yet, there was this strange, heavy lingering in the air.
During one of our band practices, Klee looked at me and asked a question that stopped me mid-strum: “Why is it so hard to write songs of happy times?”
As artists, we’re conditioned to believe that great work only comes from the “darkness we’ve survived.” We feel like we have to mine our past traumas or dwell on the “gray and December” moments just to find something deep enough to say. But there we were, with the sun shining and not a damn cloud in the sky, realizing that by constantly looking back at the storms we’d weathered, we were missing the “light of today.”
I started playing a melody, and it was like a dam broke. The song poured out of Klee as if it were being channeled from somewhere else entirely.
The lyrics of “The Happy Song” really get to the heart of that struggle. We often feel like we owe it to our past to keep grieving, as if being “just fine” is somehow a betrayal of the struggles we’ve been through. But as the song says, “spirit doesn’t bother much with time.” It’s already done. It’s okay to smile. It’s okay to decide that you don’t belong in the “hell” of your past heartaches anymore.
We realized that while the contrast of sorrow makes the sweetness of tomorrow better, we don’t have to live in the contrast. We belong in the now.
The chorus became our anthem: “I’m gonna do it right this second before this second is forever gone.” In the art world—and in life—it’s so easy to ride the rollercoaster of worry. We spend so much time expecting the winds to blow or the light to go that we forget to revel in the moment we’re actually standing in. This song was our way of claiming that happiness. It’s our way of saying that we want to share the love that’s here and now, in the only way we know how.
Just Breathe and Be Happy
By the time we reached the outro of the recording, the energy in the room had shifted. It became a reminder that we create “what is and all that will ever be.” If you can believe that, then you realize that just being able to breathe is reason enough to be happy.
We’re so excited to share “The Happy Song” with you. It’s a piece of our journey from the Florida Keys, but more than that, it’s a piece of our philosophy. Life is a blink of an eye, and then it fades away. Don’t spend that blink waiting for a storm that isn’t there. Be grateful, make way for a change, and just be happy.
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