Come and Get Your Love (Guardians of the Galaxy)

The opening of Guardians of the Galaxy and, in a very real sense, the opening of a decade of blockbuster movies that finally admitted that joy was worth taking seriously. Redbone's groove is interlocking, almost tribal in its locked-in simplicity — guitar and bass circling each other in a riff that doesn't resolve so much as it perpetually arrives, giving the song an almost hypnotic forward pull. The rhythm is a statement: not complicated, not trying to impress, just deeply, completely in its own pocket. The vocals carry a sweetness that borders on innocence, male harmonies stacked warmly without any rock posturing, and the result is a song that sounds genuinely happy rather than performed happy. Redbone were a Native American rock band navigating a mainstream market that didn't quite know what to do with them, and "Come and Get Your Love" became their biggest hit — a crossover moment that arrived because the song was simply too good to ignore. Its placement in the film, over a scene of a man dancing through alien ruins, works because the song itself is about unselfconscious delight, the particular pleasure of not caring who's watching. You play this in the car with the windows down in spring, at the pregame before something you've been looking forward to for weeks, when you want music that doesn't demand anything from you except that you enjoy it.