conor.

indierawk:

I’m sure you’ve guys seen the trailer already and god only knows how many times we need to see Zooey Deschanel’s beautiful face, so here are the songs that will apparently appear on the soundtrack. According to Stereogum, the tracklisting goes as follows:

Regina Spektor - “Us”
The Smiths - “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out”
Belle & Sebastian - “The Boy With The Arab Strap”
Black Lips - “Bad Kids”
The Smiths - “Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want.”
Patrick Swayze - “She’s Like The Wind.”
Jack Penate - “Have I Been a Fool? “
The Doves - “There Goes the Fear”
Hall & Oates - “You Make My Dreams”
Knight Rider Theme
Temper Trap - “Sweet Disposition”
Carla Bruni - “Quelqu’un M’a Dit”
Black Lips - “Veni, Vidi, Vici”
Paper Route - “The Music”
Feist - “Mushaboom”
Regina Spektor - “Hero”
Spoon - “Infinite Pet”
Simon & Garfunkel - “Bookends”
Wolfmother - “Vagabond”
Mumm-Rah - “She’s Got You High”

Karaoke Selections:
Poison “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”
Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazlewood as performed by Zooey Deschanel “Sugar Town”
The Pixies “Here Comes Your Man”

I know - awful Beatles reference. Couldn’t help myself.

But - the reason I use that reference is I was listening to Sigur Ros and thought of the concept of “pure happiness”, with that Beatles song being the first song I could think of with ‘happiness’ in the title.

So - pure happiness. What is it? Essentially it is an injection of emotional substitute into some melancholy or even normalcy of being. This emotional substitute is through music. So, I thought to myself, what embodies happiness? Sigur Ros.

Three songs that define happiness through their music:

Hoppipola

Completely overused (and therefore perhaps overrated) tune that really shows us hope in musical form. It’s no wonder that every web video and movie trailer (I’m looking at you Slumdog Millionaire) is using this song to chronicle some epic journey of the soul. It has a sublime piano riff that continues throughout the song and will get stuck in your head (guaranteed), assisted by some atmosphereic drums and guitar. Awesome, perhaps iconic song that ultimately shows happiness through hope.

Gobbledigook

OK, before last night, I always thought that this song was pure happiness. PLain and simple, I thought it refelcted inspiration in music. However, upon greater reflection I see that it shows a major part of happiness - freedom. As the music video itself shows, through the use of nudists caviorting around a forest, happiness is the ability to be free, to be yourself and to be together, both with others and with nature (argh Emily Dickinson reflection).

Inní mér syngur vitleysingur

This song is pure happiness. There we go. I guess although I really liked this song prior to my discovery, it was pushed on by Slumdog Millionaire once more. In an obscure way of course. Ryan McNutt, on his blog mixed SM with this song for a Best of 2008 mixtape. And did it work. So, last night when perusing my iTunes library for Sigur Ros after a huge amount of thought put into deciphering the Hopelandic lyrics of Hljómalind (I did), I stumbled upon this song. It is happiness. From the chimes to the kicking beat, this song is amazing. It’s no surprise the english translation is “within me a lunatic sings”. It truly seems to be about self-actualisation and the aoppreciation of one’s being (wow, that was deep thought). I think I worked that out last night, playing the air drums to the joyous beat of this song.

So yeah. Pure Happiness. I’m sure there are heaps of other songs - I just thought of these ones first.