I just listened to the second disc of that Herman's Hermits compilation album. I'd previously noticed a few interesting things in the lyrics of "Smile Please," but listening to it this time, I found more that ties the whole song together.
In (what I think is) the second verse, there's the line "Don’t be quite so negative, I’m positive they’ll turn out fine." I'd noticed the internal rhyme with negative and positive and also how they're opposites, but it wasn't until now that I really understood the context. The first verse explains how the singer/speaker and the girl he's addressing are in a photo booth. So negative works in the pessimistic sense, but it also hints at the photographic sense. (The next line is "The scene will soon develop if we stay in here a little time.")
The internal rhyme of negative and positive also has a precedent in the first verse: "We’re sitting in this cubicle, it’s beautiful to get you alone." It's more of a slant rhyme (cubicle and beautiful), but it still works in the song because there's also the line "Things are getting better all the time." So it's as if the rhyme itself is improving (from slant to perfect) along with the situation (or at least the assertion that the situation is improving).
