How “Happy” Happened

It was summertime.  I was newly single.  Still in the aftermath phase of a recently ended, somewhat short-lived dating experience, I'm sitting on the edge of my bed perplexed with a singular and seemingly relationship-fundamental question:  "I wonder if I make her happy?"  And there it was -- I knew that it was a song the moment my brain formed that question.  So I immediately canceled my plans of going to bed, sprinted to grab my guitar, sprinted back to edge of my bed, and musically sounded out the question that I pretty much knew the answer to.  It fleshed itself out pretty quickly (I mean let's face it, the chorus only has 3 words).

I wrote a good chunk of the song that night: most of verse 1, the chorus, some ideas for verse 2.  Then a few weeks later I went to New York City with some friends and family for my annual NYC birthday party.  I stayed for about a week and at one point my friend Craig and I were toying around with some pretty hilarious ideas for the bridge section of the song that combined partial phrases with non-sense syllables to imply meanings relevant to “Happy”.  They didn't wind up making it into the song, but maybe I’ll include it in a secret track or something someday.

Kinda ironic to look back on because a month earlier, I had 10 of the projected 11 songs picked out for my full album (which actually wound up being 16 songs).  I told the girl from said dating experience that I needed to choose one more song but none of my other songs seemed to fit quite right on this album.  She suggested that I not choose the 11th song yet, but just continue to work on the already-chosen 10 and wait for a possible brand new creation to be the final song.  And that’s exactly what happened.  So in the end, not only did she supply the inspiration for the song, but “Happy” also became the first single to be released from the album.