Bobby McFerrin – Don't Worry, Be Happy
1988 · Directed by Drew Takahashi
4.2M Likes
Best comments
1.“All the dislikers are dudes who think this song is by Bob Marley.”
More comments
- 2.“I find Robin Williams in strange places.”
- 3.“My mom is profoundly Deaf, and this is her favorite song because of the lyrics. She'll try to sing it to me when I'm stressed out – she doesn't know the tune, but it always makes me smile!”
The story
Every sound on this record is Bobby McFerrin. The bass, the percussion, the backing vocals, the goofy accent – all him, overdubbed on eight tracks at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley. He took the title from a Meher Baba poster he spotted in a friend's San Francisco apartment. In September 1988 it became the first a cappella song to hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100, knocking off Guns N' Roses, and it won Song of the Year and Record of the Year at the Grammys.
The video is pure clowning. Director Drew Takahashi, co-founder of Colossal Pictures, cuts between McFerrin singing in a chair in a white tux and three grown men goofing off: McFerrin, Robin Williams in a rotating closet of outfits doing silly dances, and Bill Irwin, the vaudeville clown later known as Mr. Noodle on Sesame Street. In one bit McFerrin plays a ruined investor eyeing a window, clutching a newspaper about the Dow's 508-point crash of October 1987.
Not everybody was charmed. Public Enemy took a swipe at it in Fight the Power, and when George H. W. Bush's campaign used it without asking, McFerrin objected and stopped performing it. Still, the Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2024. And it lives on inside every Big Mouth Billy Bass.
