All the good ideas that are self-evident in retrospect sound ridiculous at first. You don’t make a rap musical about Alexander Hamilton, for instance, and you don’t commission a soundtrack for a beloved comic strip special from a relatively obscure San Francisco jazz musician. But so it was for the Peanuts shows in the 1960s, and now this music is now so entwined with our national psyche, representative of the very best of us—playful and spirited, fundamentally optimistic, cool in an unstudied way—to be a contender for a secular national anthem. 60 years on, it sounds like home.

Vince Guaraldi Trio, “Linus and Lucy,” written by Vince Guaraldi, 1964.

This post is part of Music 100, a love letter to songs. 100 words on 100 songs in 100 days, running from Groundhog Day to 4th of July, 2025.

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