While The Beatles, namely John Lennon, were huge activists, they often made music to spread their message of love, peace, and various political stances—in the long run, it wasn’t the most effective method nor did it have any sort of longevity. “All You Need Is Love” is the celebratory ending track to their 1967 album “Magical Mystery Tour.”

While the message is good and blatantly written in the lyrics, music doesn’t always hold up in terms of activism against the bigger power. However, in the animated movie “The Yellow Submarine,” the song does in fact save a planet from being taken over by music-hating creatures—Blue Meanies. It’s a clear vision of what would happen if real life was a cartoon and John Lennon could hop around in a fur coat telling everyone to just hug it out. Coincidentally it’s also used at the end of a 2007 Beetle-JukeBox musical movie, “Across The Universe.” Once again, the song resolves some sort of tension as the main characters sing it on the roof of a building (a homage to the Beatles’ final live “Let It Be” rooftop concert, complete with them almost getting arrested), and the movie ends with the two love interests telepathically forgiving one another from the roofs of two buildings. Apparently, all you really do need is love, and a Paul McCartney look-alike to sing about it.

Maybe music can’t solve all our problems and make everyone anti-war, as much as we’d like it to, but that doesn’t make the song any less good than it is. The Beatles were known for their boy-band love songs of their early career, like “Love Me Do,” “And I Love Her” and “It’s Only Love.” It’s nice to hear a song that’s not just about loving one person romantically, but loving everyone just because it’s a nice thing to do. It’s a delightfully optimistic song that can definitely put anyone in a good mood.