The Maroon ran a Valentine’s Day special on the Five Best Love Songs of All Time. Five Voices writers expressed their feelings, and the fact that they didn’t even have one song repeated suggests that this is a rather silly exercise. Nonetheless, Sam offered his list, and now I feel like I want to weigh in, too.
Of course this list will be wrong. In fact, part of me wants to put Marlene Dietrich in the list just since I heard “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” today, or, as mentioned, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division just because I’ve seen 24 Hour Party People twice in the past five days. The latter clearly fails because, ultimately, I don’t particularly like Ian Curtis’s voice–the sloppy Cure version I found today I prefer. Speaking of the Cure, then, let’s start this list:
.: 5. “Exploding Boy,” The Cure. This has been among my most beloved songs for over a decade. The Cure aren’t exactly the best at love songs, but when it’s on, it’s on. I could almost just as easily put “Catch” here, or even “Disintegration,” but I’m being a little obscure. The song is quintessentially Cure–weird synths, loud, hollow drums, and 12-string acoustic rhythm guitar part. The lyrics are appropriately weird (”you talked until your tongue fell out and then you talked some more”) and generally confusing. Yet there’s something about the repeating of “Not today….” followed by the “ho ho” at the end that gives it a certain weight and sadness. It’s hard to tell who wins, who loses, but it seems that that’s part of the point.
.: 4. “This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody),” Talking Heads. I worry that this list is in part “best love songs offered by my best-loved bands,” but this one stands strong despite my feelings about the band in question. In the extras to Stop Making Sense, David Byrne interviews himself and offers that this is the only THeads love song (I’d offer “Heaven” also, and, hell, even “Drugs,” and maybe “Stay Up Late” and “And She Was”–if only for the wildly sexy way in which the simple line “and she was moving very slowly, rising up above the earth” is delivered), and then adds that in the movie he sings it to a lamppost. Yet there’s still a touching delicacy to the song. First, it’s really pretty simple: the bassline never changes (and is actually played on the keyboard), Tina Weymouth plays a guitar line made up of three notes–but what three notes. In the version of the song in Stop Making Sense, Bernie Worrell supplements the instrumentation with a crushing ending keyboard solo while Byrne dances with his lamp post.
But it’s the lyrics that move this along. I’m a sucker for songs about women from space (and this includes, of course, “Interplanet Janet”), and there’s something so ethereal about the connection envisioned in this song lyrically–from the lights in the eyes (suggesting interplanetariness as well as working with the lamppost) to simpler sense of space as sharing physical intimacy (”sing into my mouth” or “I’m just an animal, looking for a home, and share the same space for a minute or two”). There’s a bit of that “o that I could be born of your flesh and blood” (as Joyce wrote to Nora) in the way home is figured in the song that gives it even more depth, but even so, every time I hear Byrne turn it up for the “And you love me till my heart stops” line, I get goosebumps.
.: 3. “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” any version, ultimately. Disco songs get an awful rap, and why this song isn’t on just about every “I Love You” CD ever made totally confuses me. The politics of the song are very odd–there’s the command of the title, yet at the same time, the singer is begging and pleading for the command to be honored. The plaintive tone then gets kicked up for the chorus, when the singer reëstablishes a semblance of control over the situation (”now come on girl and do what you gotta do….” from the Harold Melvin version). It ends up uncertain–and maybe symbiotic–and, hence, like love. The tempo of this song may make it seem like an unlikely candidate, which is sort of a shame. There are lots of fast love songs (Barry White’s “What Am I Gonna Do with You,” Chic’s “My Forbidden Lover,” about half of the fast songs Saint Etienne have recorded, and, yes, even some Erasure and/or New Order) but they always get pushed away because people forget that there’s something fun and lovely about jumping around and dancing. Part of love involves winding the clock up, and songs like this help out in that direction.
.: 2. “We Have All the Time in the World,” Louis Armstrong. A Bond song? Yeah, I suppose. I would argue that On Her Majesty’s Secret Service is often ignored for what happens between Bond and Tracy. The closing minutes of the movie are absolutely emotionally crushing, and the sick joke of the theme song (and epitaph) make the “We Have All the Time in the World” a truly sad song yet still manages to capture something true and unavoidable about love–being in love involves wishing that you have all the time, only to realise that, in fact, you simply don’t–no one does. The sick irony of the song is buoyed by the almost absurd string arrangement (that calls to mind “You Only Live Twice,” which was probably the only other good Bond song until Carly Simon). There’s something heartbreaking about imagining Louis Armstrong singing with a string orchestra in 1968, keeping his flashy trumpet limited to just playing the melody, but there’s also something oddly touching–I’ve been told that a lot of musicians (specifically Ella Fitzgerald) kind of felt they’d made it once they performed with string accompaniments, even though the Fitzgerald bits I’ve heard didn’t strike me.
.: 1. “Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder),” The Beach Boys. I wish I could put down an entire album, since then other works like A Love Supreme would be up here, but I’m limited to songs, and I hope that picking this song can sort of capture the fact that Pet Sounds deserves to be on here as a total unit–not broken up. I like this album. A lot. And if I had to pick just one song, I’d have to go with “Don’t Talk,” because of the heart-breaking fantasy world it relies on in order to push forward its message. The singer in this song ultimately asks his loved object not to talk–he wants to push signification out of the way with her. He wants his emotions to transcend language, to have communication go on just between the two bodies, as their hearts beat, hopefully in unison (echoed by the shuffle of the bass guitar).
And that desire is the ultimate myth of being in love–that somehow you and the loved object share some kind of deep connection that transcends language, that transcends even reality. If that were necessarily true, though, it seems that a song like “Don’t Talk” would cease being sad and would be, instead, a celebration of something wonderful. Brian Wilson probably didn’t realise what a deep semiotic statement he was making with this song (or Pet Sounds as a whole), but it’s important to remember that nowhere I know is this sadness and irony captured better.
So there you are, fans. Five beats for lovers. I guess they’re sad–but sad in the way of maintaining some sort of hope. Lovers will never transcend language; it’s epistemologically impossible. But there’s something to be said for trying.
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