[troutman]

I imagine most songs we consider "happy" are in a major key, with a higher than average beats-per-minute.

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/...seventh-chords

So a group of scientists decided to examine how other chords might affect emotion. First, they compiled their data: nearly 90,000 popular English-language guitar songs recorded from the 1950s to the 2010s across five regions of the world. Then, they looked at how the chords matched the song lyrics. Each song got a happiness score, based on a popular crowdsourced data set that ranks 10,000 of the most common English words for positive and negative emotions. They found—as expected—that minor chords were linked with unhappy words and major chords were linked with happy ones. But the most positive emotions were conveyed by seventh chords, a triad of notes with an extra note on top that changes the sound.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.89e9a57b795b

Jolij's final equation of Feel Good Index (FGI) includes the sum of all positive references in the lyrics, the song's tempo in beats per minute and its key. The higher a song's FGI, the more feel-good it is predicted to be. Happy lyrics, a fast tempo of 150 beats per minute (the average pop song has a tempo of 116 beats per minute), and a major third musical key all help create music we perceive as brimming with positive emotion.

“The number one feel-good song is 'Don't Stop Me Now' by Queen — it's quite a bit faster than the average song, plus it's in a major key that works quite well, and if you look at the lyrics, they are very positive

Music is a world within itself
With a language we all understand
With an equal opportunity
For all to sing, dance and clap their hands
But just because a record has a groove
Don't make it in the groove
But you can tell right away at letter A
When the people start to move

They can feel it all over