A child sits in the backseat of their parents’ car, with their siblings, as they drive from their hometown to go visit their grandparents. They look out the window, the land is vast and full of vegetation. They give a quick glance back to see their parents inserting a CD into the car. Time passes by as they look out the window with the songs playing in the background, and then suddenly the most beautiful song they have ever heard comes on. ‘Here and Now’ sung by Luther Vandross, a song that has forever imprinted itself in the heart of this child, a love song that fully expresses how they believe love feels like.
Love songs: I would describe them as melodic tools used to convey all the feelings associated with love. These songs are songs that are written to express the feeling of love; what love is, how love feels and what love can make a person do. Love songs can have many different sub-topics such as break-up songs, a love lost and a longing for love. These are still love songs, but they are songs that express the harsher or more negative side of being in love.
I am someone who wholeheartedly believes that the type of music that we listen to has an influence on how we view the world. It is no different with love songs; they have, on each individual, an influence on how they view love, how they may show love and what they might even consider to be love. I asked a few of my friends to send me love songs that, to them, sound like what they feel love feels like. One of my friends sent me ‘Lean Back’ by Amanda Cook & Chandler Moore, ‘Crazy’ by India Arie and ‘Die with you’ by Beyonce. She explained to me that with the India Arie and Beyonce songs remind her of romantic love and how she thinks that is how it should or would feel like. She went into more depth when speaking about ‘Lean Back’ saying that this song is the one that taught her about a real and authentic love, which is to her the love of God. Another friend told me that she views love from two sides – the one side is the happy and bright one and the other is the sad and darker side of it. She sent me ‘Back at One’ by Brian McKnight to show how she sees the brighter side of love and to show the darker side she sent ‘Be Without You’ by Mary J Blige and ‘Ndidinge’ by Cici as her songs that describe what she feels love feels like. She went on to further explain that having these songs in her life has shown her that love is sometimes a two-sided coin, and that no side is wrong or right but that they are both necessary to balance each other out.
When trying to look at the influence that love songs have on society, I started looking at different time periods and how love songs might have changed through the years. My initial plan or my hypothesis was that through the years love songs have become less romantic or less sweet, and that this has had an influence on how we show love to each other. This is a thought that I am sure many of us nowadays may have. I thought I would find this to be true until I had a conversation with my Music lecturers. In this conversation I asked about how love songs have changed over time and how that has influenced the way we view love. The response was that when it comes to the lyrical content and what the songs are about nothing really has changed with love songs. Love songs from different time periods still convey the same messages because the feeling of love has not really changed over time. The way we show each other love might have changed however and how we approach relationships. Unsatisfied with the response I pressed on, giving examples of what we would consider love songs in our generation and he said to me that the examples I was giving were not really love songs but instead they were, what he called, ‘lust songs’. He then proceeded to say that lust songs have existed throughout time, but their lyrical delivery has changed more than love songs over the years. The difference between lust songs from back then and now is that now they are less subtle and are more straightforward with what they are saying. This led me to my final thought, which was that ‘lust’ songs are the ones that have a stronger influential relationship with our generation. One half of me agrees with the fact that love songs have not really changed over time, in terms of what they are saying and how they are saying it but the other half of me protests this. The reason is because when I listen to the older love songs, they just feel like they have been injected with all the ingredients needed to create romance. I find that they sound sweeter and warmer to me, I must say that one of the reasons for this could be nostalgia. Many of my favourite love songs such as ‘Falling’ by Melba Moore and ‘You Let Me In’ by Dan Siegel are my favourite partly because they remind me of my parents, and they take me back to a time when I was younger, and life was less complicated.
After my conversation with my lecturers, I was slightly surprised with their response. It did however make me think of all the wonderful love songs that we have nowadays, songs such as ‘Kahle’ by Amanda Black, ‘Sycamore Tree’ by Ruth B, ‘Suited’ by Shekinah, ‘In and Out of Love’ by Oh Wonder, ‘Love Drought’ by Beyonce, and ‘Trivia: Love’ by BTS, just to name a few. The other thing I realised is that love songs are timeless songs because love is something all generations experience, whether it is romantic, familial, or platonic. We all have listened to a love song that was probably written way before our parents were even born, an example of this is songs such as ‘Unforgettable’ by Nat King Cole and a new favourite – ‘Put Your Head on My Shoulders’ by Paul Anka. Not only do we know of these songs, but we can still relate to the words being sung in them, as if the songs were written specifically for us. This is my favourite thing about love songs, they are, like the love that most of them talk about, everlasting.
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