...of an occasional series that exists entirely to allow me to talk about some of my favourite songs.
I've become totally infatuated with The Magnetic Fields's "69 Love Songs" as of late, at the exact same time my interest in music has waned a little (I go through these phases from time to time; I hate to be one of those people claiming that "there's just not that much new music that interests me at the moment," but...). But anyway, the variety of songs "69 Love Songs" offers is proof that Stephin Merritt is one of the most talented voices in modern music, and the album offers more with every listen. It would be one thing to admire the ambition and scope such a project entails, but that it is so successful musically is really something to behold.
The very nature of the album has gotten me to thinking of the importance of love as a theme in songwriting. In fact, I wrote an essay on lost love for one of my degree courses (American Popular Song), using Jimmy Ruffin's "What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted" and The Louvin Brothers "When I Stop Dreaming" as examples. The conclusion I drew was an obvious one - that love can leave its mark in many ways, but in the aftermath it often leaves the afflicted wishing they'd never found it in the first place.
This fits in nicely with "69 Love Songs," which isn't exclusively positive exploration of love. There's plenty of heartbreak - the various narrator's speak of needing a new heart to replace a broken one; of bitter tears and love in the shadows. "Yeah! Oh, Yeah!" sees a girl asking "are you out of love with me?" to a guy who responds emphatically with the words of the title. The tone is often downbeat, which makes the work all the more honest - love is many things, but it'd be ridiculous to ignore the negative sides of it.
These considerations have led me to one question - what would my own personal sixty-nine favourite love songs be? Well, that's what I intend to find out - at present, it's not like I have a list already drawn up, even though some of the songs that will appear are a given. So I'm not presenting them in any kind of order or ranking, instead simply writing about them as they stand out to me as deserving inclusion on this list. Today, it's a handful of alternative rock staples, but in future installments I'll definitely be broadening my scope.
1. Neutral Milk Hotel "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea"
Where to start with what I consider to be the greatest album of all time? (to such an extent that I don't really consider there to be any room for debate.) I've never felt as emotionally connected to any piece of art - the number of lines that floor me every single time is staggering. I used to play these songs through my head whilst working my crappy supermarket job, and they not only got me through the day, but they got to me even then - I'd have to disguise my state as best as possible whilst feeling overwhelmingly affected by the beauty of Jeff Mangum's work. In particular, the lines "as we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for," from opening song "King Of Carrot Flowers pt. One," and "in my dreams you're alive and you're crying," from closing song "Two-Headed Boy Pt. Two," never fail to evoke a reaction. To me, that's exactly what music should be capable of.
However, it's the title track that really gets to the hopeless romantic in me. From the opening line - "what a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all round the sun" - there is a sense of joy that prevails throughout, as though Mangum has found the perfect girl, and not only wants to express how happy he is to have done so, but to justify the weight of his feelings by drawing parallels between love and the wonder of creation. By the end of the song, Mangum is marvelling at "how strange it is to be anything at all," a remarkable line that takes the song right back to its beginnings, highlighting the transformative power of love. At no point is he kidding himself - he knows that one day it will come to an end, that "one day we will die/and our ashes will fly/from the aeroplane over the sea," but that doesn't matter, because in the here and now, everything is perfect.
2. The Postal Service "Such Great Heights"
One of those bands that came to me at exactly the right time in my life. Already a devoted fan of Death Cab For Cutie, I'd read a couple of (mixed) reviews about a new Ben Gibbard side project, without particularly feeling like it was essential to my life. I only bought it because I stumbled across it in the HMV that used to live in Manchester Piccadilly train station, and only then because I had the exact amount of money in my pocket to purchase it with. I didn't get the chance to listen to it for a few hours, so I read through the lyrics (not something I do too often, because for the most part, song lyrics are only successful as song lyrics). And to be honest, there didn't appear to that much substance to them. Of course, having listened to the album a few times, all I felt was a sense of love towards it. Sure, it isn't perfect, but there's enough good about it to mean that it has still retained its importance to me to this day.
I'll readily admit that the lyrics of "Such Great Heights" are somewhat trite, in a way that would undoubtedly annoy the hell out of me if I didn't like the music. But this is Gibbard at his most gloriously uplifting - how can you not get swept up in a love story where the narrator speculates "that God himself did make us into corresponding shapes/like puzzle pieces from the clay"? Gibbard doesn't really belive the sentiment as such - acknowledging that it "may seem like a stretch" - but that isn't the point - it's the thought that counts. It isn't a complicated song, but it is another fantastic example of the transformative power of love - which has literally lifted the protagonists of the song to the "great heights" of the title - and another example of two people finding perfection in the faces of one another.
3. Pavement "Major Leagues"
Not known for being a straightforward lyricist - and often choosing to be actively disingenuous - Stephen Malkmus does have moments of openness that stand out a mile from the rest of his oeuvre. "Here," from first album "Slanted and Enchanted," is a good example - the opening lines "I was dressed for success/but success it never comes" carry with them an air of absolute failure that manifests itself as self-pity; the plaintive desire of "Range Life" - "if I could settle down/then I would settle down" - comes across as a genuine yearning for an easier life; and in "Shady Lane," when he declares that "I'm an island of such great complexity," you get the sense that he's speaking on a personal level.
"Major Leagues," however, stands out as the clearest statement of sentiment in the Pavement catalogue - at one point, Malkmus even goes so far as to sing "cater to my walls and see if they fall/don't leave me," trying to bury "don't leave me" under the weight of the preceding line in an effort to disguise the desperation those three words contain, but not quite succeeding. When the song first begins, it sounds like a love song, but the dismissive nature of the second line ("relationships, hey, hey, hey," delivered as though they're the least interesting subject in the world) shakes that false sense of security, creating a new state whereby you expect Malkmus's usual lyrical evasiveness. But he can't keep it up, going on to remark of his lover that "you kiss like a rock/but you know I need it anyway," and in the process displaying weakness for everyone to see. "Major Leagues" certainly doesn't detail a conventional love, but it captures perfectly the neediness that is always partially associated with the feeling.
4. The Shins "New Slang"
When considering The Shins for this list, it occurred to me that, as far as "Oh, Inverted World" is concerned, the lyrical content has always been something of a mystery to me. So reading through the booklet, I was delighted to realise that "New Slang" is indeed a song about love - of love lost, more precisely. It's honest and open in the same way "Major Leagues" is - it contains the exact same sense of longing for companionship - but whereas Malkmus is seemingly clinging on to something that he isn't entirely satisfied with, in "New Slang" James Mercer is yearning for the past. The song begins by detailing the naivety involved with the initial stages of becoming intimate with someone new, the line "I was happier then with no mindset," capturing the sense of easy contentment that soon gives way to a process of overthinking everything, a process that is often the death of any burgeoning relationship.
That's exactly what the rest of the song details, and it sees Mercer in a particularly somber mood. He makes the mistake so many of us make, motivated by the same feelings that drive us towards it, revealing that he "never should have called/but my heads to the wall and I'm lonely," knowing that it was the wrong thing to do from the start but going through with it anyway, because it somehow feels right. Ths song makes it clear that whatever he felt for the girl, she didn't share, Mercer singing "if you'd 'a took to me like/a gull takes to the wind," with the key word obviously being 'if.' 'If' she had of done, "the rest of (their) lives would'a fared well." But because she didn't, Mercer is riddled with self-doubt, his feelings of hopelessness best expressed in the line "I'm looking in on the good life I might be doomed never to find." He details the feelings associated with the aftermath of any love affair brilliantly, coming across as a man who has completely given up, who sees no future for himself outside of the relationship that he has lost.
5. The Mountain Goats "No Children"
A song I'm completely obsessed with at the moment, even though that can't be seen as a good thing when you consider its lyrical content, with the lines "I hope you die/I hope we both die" being the payoff to each verse of gradually escalating rancour. Has anyone ever captured love gone sour so bitterly as John Darnielle in this song? The narrator hates his ex-wife ("I hope I lie/and tell everyone you were a good wife), his friends (whom he hopes "give up on trying to save us," and if they don't it doesn't matter, because he'll "come up with a fail-safe plot/to piss off the dumb few that forgave us"), and even himself (not only hoping for his own death, but declaring that "I hope I never stay sober"). He's positively embraced the collapse of his marriage - which the title implies has ended because of irreconcilable differences over the issue of children - which may simply be a coping mechanism, or may indeed be the celebration the song sometimes suggests. Either way, when singing "I hope it stays dark forever/I hope the worst isn't over," you believe him.
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