It's fair to say that Jeff Lynne is a musical genius. This is obviously not just for his work with the Electric Light Orchestra, but even for his work as a producer.

Now thanks to science, he can claim to be the composer of the happiest song on earth.

So what has science deemed the happiest song ever?

The 1977 song Mr. Blue Sky, taken from the ELO album Out of the Blue.

Jacob Jolij, a Netherlands-based researcher, developed something he calls The Feel Good Song Formula and with it, he was able to determine the planet's cheeriest song.

Jolij went on to study 126 songs from a period of over 50 years and surveyed 2,000 people where they were asked what song(s) made them the happiest.

During his study, Jolij found what makes a happy song is to have a tempo that is different from a normal pop song. This usually meant songs in the 150  BPM (beats per minute) range and had to be written in a major key. For songs not in a major key, they need to have more than three cords. Besides the music, lyrics needed to be on the positive side or a bit nonsensical.

Queen's Don't Stop Me Now was originally the planet's most joyous tune in an initial study. It was then bummed to the second happiest song in place of Mr. Blue Sky. Jolij believes this has more to do with cultural differences that may help in influences what the happiest song is from place to place.

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