Monday, June 18, 2007

Why I'll Never Write a Love Song

I am an enormously practical woman. This means that many of life's most romantic moments either annoy me, or miss me completely. The end of Titanic? I was rooting for the iceberg.

Nowhere is this more apparent than my dislike of sappy love songs. A few weeks ago, when I was at Katie's, we listened to a song with the lyric, "Without you, girl, I just can't live." That stopped me cold. I mean, how is that romantic? It's so clingy and desperate. Any sensible woman would run away screaming. And love songs are full of such silliness. They're usually about how life is empty and meaningless without the relationship. And that isn't love. That's a psychiatric disorder.

"Wonderful Tonight," of course, is my least favorite love song ever. It's about a guy whose girl takes forever to get ready for a party, so he retaliates by getting tanked and making her drive him home. It's an ode to passive aggressive jerkiness. "If I Fell," that Beatles classic, is basically a request to be the revenge rebound girlfriend. How sweet!

The love songs I like are odes to actual love, not to lust and desperation. Stevie Wonder's "Overjoyed," for example.

If I suddenly developed musical talent, I would write songs like, "Thank You for Remembering My Birthday" or, "I Value Your Opinions." Or, how about, "We Have Many Similar Interests," or, best of all, "You Don't Complete Me, But That's OK Because I Am Already a Person in My Own Right."

Who thinks I'd get a record deal?

2 comments:

robsv said...

"Music for the Real World, Vol. I" - count me in!

Red Photography said...

How about Lovely Day by Bill Withers? That song is only a little sappy and it expresses a very nice sentiment--When he sees his girl (or whoever/whatever) he knows everything is okay. Even cynical, cynical me can see the benefit in that one.