Moving On
Heard It in a Love Song
LoveHowTo welcomes Jim McFarlin, who will write a new column, Heard It in a Love Song, on the relationship between music and love. We all have songs that immediately put us back in the arms of our high school sweetheart, or on the road to meet an illicit lover, or that keep the tears coming when we're going through a bad breakup. It's the last of these that Jim addresses in his premier column.
Has this ever happened to you? You have just been blindsided by the Katrina of all breakups. Your sweetest baboo, the love of your life, has made it fairly clear that you now are despised and never should be seen in this place again. (You know this because the words "I despise you!" and "I never want to see you in this place again!" have been uttered loudly within the past few minutes.)
You slink back to your car, prepare for the long, sad ride home and turn to your car radio for a shot of emotional solace. Suddenly, it seems every station on the dial is playing a song that only serves to pump up the volume of your despair.
The hard rock station — "Love Hurts" (Nazareth, 1975);
The Top 40 station — "Bleeding Love" (Leona Lewis, 2007);
The hip-hop station — "Independent" (Webbie featuring Lil' Boosie & Lil Phat, 2008);
The classic R&B station — "Love Don't Live Here Anymore," (Rose Royce, 1978, or for those who prefer more sanitized sentiment, the 1984 Madonna cover version on the pop station);
The country station — "Just Got Started Lovin' You" (James Otto, 2008);
AARRRRGGH! Make it STOP!
Pull off the freeway, put the car in park and let the water works flow, bubby. It's maddening, to be sure, but it's also completely predictable.
Love is the universal emotion (or should be), music the universal language. The latter is the conduit through which the former is frequently conveyed. If it helps at all, there's probably not a sentiment, sensation or reaction you've experienced in the whirligig of romance that hasn't been felt and rhapsodized about by some songwriter somewhere. That can be either comforting or a little creepy, depending upon your level of paranoia.
Nobody knows for certain how many songs about love there are, but based upon my extensive research it seems safe to say that it's most of them. A gajillion, at least. Hey, we should never run out of topics to discuss here!
And here we want to talk about the near-magical way that lyrics can capture the essence of emotion, how music can make us act and react about love, why (like Elton told us) sad songs say so much. We want to know how you think and feel about the music of romance, to begin a free and open exchange of ideas, so I hope you write like voters in Florida vote: early and often. What's the best love song ever? Your personal favorite? The absolute worst? The one line that makes you just a wee bit weepy every time you hear it?
Me, I've been writing about pop music in one form or another for nearly 40 years (DAMN! I'm older than I realized!), for major newspapers and magazines alike, so I can respond to any question you possibly could have about love songs whether I actually know the answer or not. At the very least I have enough experience to sound like I do. Those who don't know, pontificate.
We're going to have fun here, I think. Being the sensitive male that I am, I'm very much looking forward to having regular conversations about love, which as you know is a many splendored thing.
Now turn that radio back on.
Jim McFarlin has been writing professionally about music, entertainment and pop culture in one form or another for more than three decades. Formerly pop music critic for The Detroit News, his work also has appeared in People, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Electronic Media and numerous other national and regional print publications. He is author, co-author or editor of seven books, including the voluminous MusicHound R&B, a 1,000-page guide to rhythm & blues releases on CD. Currently he is media columnist for The (Detroit) Metro Times and a regular contributor to the regional Michigan magazine HOUR Detroit. In keeping with the spirit of LoveHowTo, he met his sweet baboo, Karen, through Yahoo! Personals.
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