Not Gonna Write you a Post on Love Songs...
So what’s up with love songs? Some people love them (a little too much) others hate them with a passion (Frank Zappa). What is a love song? Why are there so many of them? And why the hell are they so hard to write well?
Already I can hear people slapping their heads and rolling their eyes (I have very good hearing). Millions of you reading this (please!!!!!) are saying, “Idiot! It’s a song about love!” Well, fair enough. However, love is a varied and difficult emotion to pin down. So difficult, in fact, that I am not even gonna bother trying. There are songs about happy love, sick love, sad love, unrequited love, even ugly love (Temptations: Beauty’s Only Skin Deep).
Ultimately a love song moves me when it is appropriate (i.e. good with the genre, Sarah MacLachlan lyrics wouldn’t work with a Lady Gaga sound) and the lyrics are elegant. Elegant lyrics mean they say what they need to say in the smallest space possible. My personal favorite is Sara Bareilles’ line, “The heart I swear I’d recognize is made out of my own devices.” The line is poetic, complex (but expressed in a simple way), beautiful, and appropriate for the song.
But this simplicity is precisely what makes them so damned difficult! Take the Taylor Swift song “You Belong with Me.” Now I am NOT Kanye West, I like Taylor, and I think she writes a really good song! But there are times where I am listening and I just don’t get the choices. Take the second verse, of You Belong with Me:
Walking the streets with you and your worn-out jeans
I can't help thinking this is how it ought to be
Laughing on a park bench, thinking to myself
Hey, isn't this easy?
One of these things is not like the others! Why are we calling attention to this dude’s jeans? Is it a metaphor that I am missing? Is it something bigger than just a quick image? Or is it an inappropriate use of a legitimate country lyrical device in an attempt to make a near rhyme? I am going with the last explanation. There is another way to go about it though:
Walking the streets and now it’s just you and me
I can't help thinking this is how it ought to be
Laughing on a park bench, thinking to myself
Hey, isn't this easy?
Now Taylor has been writing songs on Music Row since she was 14 so I am completely humbled by her experiences and her talent! In fact her work is really off the charts good. I recommend her song “Mine.” She shifts her lyrics across each chorus which helps tell the story and sets up the next section of every song. Frankly, I wish I had written it.
Of course there is more than countrified Sugar Pop, I love Sarah MacLachlan songs “Forgiveness”, and “Illusions of Bliss” as well as Don Henley’s “End of the Innocence” and “Heart of the Matter.” I could go on but let’s get back to the theory.
It’s the fundamental simplicity and elegance of a good song that makes it so hard to write. It’s easy to sit down belt out a blues and say “I love you baby!” It’s hard to do that in a way that moves somebody. Cliché’s kill and bad love songs are full of clichés. Take “A Moment like This” which is basically a composite of different Clichés strung together. It did well on the charts, but I’m glad I wasn’t the one who wrote it. (Kelly Please put the knives away I promise it’s nothing personal!)
A Good love song is hard to write because it requires an amazing array of talent. Every word every beat every little thing you do must have purpose. Then you take it back and slice it down again until it is done. Check out some of our stuff. Naturally I can’t do what I say other’s should do (Though I think Can’t Call it Love sounds very nice!) but I am working on improving. Much to Dom’s chagrin I am trying to write more songs and get the lyrical composition down so I can bring out some nice love songs.
Until then keep up the good fight people!
One more line from Taylor Swift that blows my mind: “Turns out freedom means nothing but missing you”
For an alternate theory check out Nick Cave’s Vienna Lecture on Love Songs
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