267. Song No. 4,031: “Got My Mind Set on You,” George Harrison
Let It Roll: Songs by George Harrison, 2009 (orig. 1987)

Despite eventually finding enough to tolerate about them to significantly relax what was once a principled distaste, the ’80s are, by far, still the least represented decade in both my music library and this blog, so I feel like it means something when the era of my birth offers up music I shamelessly, openly adore. Like this mercifully synth-light cover from my favorite Beatle, which will forever be one of those tunes I crank up and sing along to with absolutely no regard for being overheard, just like I did that long June weekend at the Poconos where the only station our foursome could agree on was a classic rock one whose format dictated a Sunday morning full of Beatles’ side projects.

For all the fondness I have for this song, though, other people have hilariously and permanently altered what first comes to mind when the chorus hits. Much like how the very first post on last.fm’s page for “The Brother of Mayor of Bridgewater” will eternally evoke at least one chorus of gigglingly repetitive potato chants, I will forever hear first a buddy singing the refrain of “Got My Mind Set on You” as “this song is the same three chords” and then Weird Al doing the same but instead noting it’s “the same six words.”

Same friend also sent me snippets from the song’s weirder of its music videos, reframed to neatly summarize why I don’t find freelancing to be a juice that’s worth the squeeze anymore:

Anyway, it’s all a nice reminder that while it’s good to love things on their own merit, not taking them too seriously and even using them as a jumping-off point for different, weirder kinds of joy makes existing more fun. And as someone who is so bone-deep tired of being sad and feeling absolutely waterlogged with too many heavy feelings, these songs all wrapped up in layers of different kinds of happiness are especially welcome oases of levity I’m thrilled to let in for a while.