This song just makes me happy.
It soars, but isn't afraid to be silly. Patrick Monahan sings about Jupiter and Venus and the Milky Way, but also about tae-bo and soy lattes. He giddily rhymes "shooting star" with "permanent scar" and "love, pride" with "deep-fried." He LITERALLY rhymes "moon" with "June" and doesn't care if all the cliché-haters roll their eyes (and you can't tell me "Since her return from her stay on the moon / She listens like spring and she talks like June" isn't an amazing line).
The string section is like sunlight through a break in clouds. And the arrangement is by Paul Buckmaster, who was also responsible for the iconic strings on Elton John's early classics (think "Tiny Dancer" or "Levon"), which is probably another reason I love this.
It's about someone going on a journey of self-discovery, on a dazzling tour of the universe, and about what changes, if anything, when they come back to someone they left behind. It's about something else, too, which you can Google if you want, but you really don't have to. Enough to know that sadness can be transmuted into joy and celebration, and "Drops of Jupiter" is proof of just that.
Happy Saturday.
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Listen to this and previous Songs of the Day here.