He is happy who lives in accordance with complete virtue and is sufficiently equipped with external goods, not for some chance period but throughout a complete life. Nicomachean Ethics, 1101a10

Last Friday was International Day of Happiness. In case you missed it while you were doing your best to stay ahead in the nasty, brutish, but never quite short enough rat race I’ve put together a playlist to act as a sort of seven-day delayed cure for the common chore. Anyway, how bad can work be? Everything is cool when you’re part of a team…

20 songs, then, from indie underachievers The Mock Turtles (proving they did have other songs besides Can You Dig It?), the matchlessly poppy Ian Broudie and The Lightning Seeds, The Animals, The Cure, The Wonder Stuff and more. Some you might not expect to find on a happiness playlist, and perhaps you’d have a point. Some of these songs are not all that upbeat, but hey, at least they’re not singing about you, right? And there’s another reason to be happy right there.

Anyway, you can but admire Guy Chadwick’s ability to write a song called Happy and then infest it with so much bitterness, and the way Ride sing a little ditty called Making Judy Smile with such splendid melancholy.

Let current RRP faves Seattle Yacht Club cheer you up with Feeling The Sunshine, let the Housemartins remind you it’s time to clock off, and if it’s cheesy happiness you’re after, Blood, Sweat & Tears have you covered.

Happy the man, and happy he alone,

he who can call today his own:

he who, secure within, can say,

Tomorrow do thy worst, for I have lived today.

Horace