"Dancing in the Moonlight" Van Morrison

This song to me represents the ultimate in what I like to call "happy music." It's music that may not be that good, complex, interesting, or well-performed, but just makes you feel good. Something about this tune in particular makes me feel better no matter what the circumstances.

First of all, it may be the synthesizer sound (or electric piano). After taking the electronic music winter term last year, I'd guess that the wave of the sound produced is close to a sine wave. As I recall, the sine wave has no overtones. This makes it sound very pure, and to me, pleasing.

Second, the lyrics obviously have a lot to do with the feeling of the song. There's no real depth to their meaning, but rather they're all about enjoying life:

"We get it almost every night
When that moon gets big and bright
it's supernatural delight -
everybody was dancin' in the moonlight!"
etc. etc.

Finally, the happy nature of the song may be related to the harmonic activity - the whole song uses the same series of chords- cm7, fm7, Bb, Eb, dm. However, there's no real cadence point - the progression just continues throughout the song to give it a nice, groovin' continuity.