McFerrin's new album coverFor a while in the '90s, before the public knew to turn to Snopes.com on such matters, an urban legend persisted that the song's originator, Bobby McFerrin, had committed suicide. Surely a song that cheerful could only lead to a heavily ironic end, no?
The No. 1 hit that won the Record and Song of the Year awards at the 1989 Grammys also began turning up in strangely post-apocalyptic contexts. It was used in the 2004 remake of Dawn of the Dead, and in Wall-E, where the title robot has a Big Mouth Billy Bass mounted fish that sings McFerrin's jolly tune amid the dystopian depression. There was only one explanation for this: The song made people so unbearably happy that the only antidote was to associate it with deep unhappiness, whether that involved suicide or the end of the world.
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