Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Love Songs - Or, did all the Muses in the planet go to sleep?!

As I was in a car (as a passenger) on a four hour ride, the driver decided to turn on Sirius satellite radio on the "Love" channel. After many below-average songs, Jermaine Jackson started playing suggesting "Why don't you do what you do when you did what you did to me" as well as "Why don't you say what you say when you say what you said anymore" and it pretty much gave me a good reason to sit here and start typing a new music-related rant.

In the past I talked about my point of view on Music creation, leaving lyrics aside, and how many "musicians" take shortcuts to try to appeal to the public. This is even clearer when it comes to lyrics. Look, I am not by any means the greatest lyricist in the planet, and I have created horrendous lyrics like "My Fart is a good Fart", but there's a limit! It seems that in the realm of love songs, which in general I have nothing against, there's the understanding that the more stereotypes you write, the more "romantic" your song is, which really pisses me off. There seems to be an understanding among sub-par writers that the more you write the word "Love" in your song, the more it reflects that same thing. The worse in all of it is that there are tons and tons of people that seem to agree, which has me flabbergasted.

If I wrote a repetitive song that said "I love the loving love that I love for you my love" would that be considered a good lyric? I certainly hope not, but you'd be surprised. In my opinion you can write two kinds of songs: funny non-serious songs or serious songs. Funny songs don't take itself seriously and you can therefore write any nonsense you want since you are clearly showing that you do not thing it is a good song. Kings of this would be for example The Bloodhound Gang which have defined their own lyrics as "Something a 5th grader would write", Flight of The Conchords with songs such as "It's Business Time" or one of my favorite, Tenacious D with for example "Fuck her gently". I have even indulged in lyrics of this kind as previously stated with a flatulence tale, which was actually the first thing I ever wrote (I know, it's sad).

Either way, if you decide to veer away from the "Funny" lyrics, you go into the serious lyrics with a serious message. That message could be love, hate, revolutionary ideas, peace on earth, you name it! The only rule is that you express your TRUE feelings in whatever matter you are talking about. Now let us concentrate on Love songs since that is what we were talking about (and we gotta get back on track). Some people have written songs that can really reflect how someone might feel when they're in love, songs like Willie Nelson's "Always on my mind" is for a example a great song that shows how you can feel when you and your loved one part ways. Another good love song (in my humble opinion) would be "More than words" by Extreme, with a perfect reflection of the message I'm trying to convey: "What would you say if I took those words away. Then you couldn't make things new, just by saying 'I love you'".

These are just two examples of how you can make a powerful love message without falling in the stupidity of repeating the word "love" as many times as you can. I only wish more songwriters would step away from that shortcut and write meaningful lyrics, that really reflect how a person in love really feels. And for anyone that has been there, you know you don't walk around all day saying "I love being in love and I love the love in the loving world". There is much more to love than that, and that 4 letter word is definitely not enough to define it.

I leave you with one of the songs I mentioned above: