Silly love songs

"You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs."
-- Paul McCartney, Silly Love Songs

I am not sure why they call love songs, love songs. Most of them aren't really about love. They are about someone being in love (or lust) with someone who doesn't love them. So by all rights, they should be called stalker songs, loser songs or simply country songs. But I suppose they lose that romantic marketability if you tried to call them what they are -- whiny crap.

But a rose is a rose.

Not that I didn't spend a good portion of my youth moping around listening to "love" songs. The 70s and 80s were full of really bad ones. There's nothing like raging hormones to make a teen aged boy susceptible to lyrics like, "You left in the rain without closing the door, I didn't stand in your way" or "Every now and then I get a little bit lonely and you're never coming around."

Of course, I also liked the lyrics from one of Harry Nilsson's songs that went something like, "You're breaking my heart, you're tearing it apart, so fuck you."

I still tear up at that one.

Barbara Streisand's song Evergreen was big when I was in my teens, too. It was from the movie A Star is Born starring who else, Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson (singer/song writer who wrote Bobbie McGee that Janis Joplin made famous). If you aren't familiar with A Star is Born, it is about a drugged out rock star at the end of his career (Kristofferson) who meets an up and coming talent (Streisand), falls in love and gets her career on track. To make it a perfect love story, he kills himself in a car accident so he doesn't drag her career down.

I tear up on that one, too.

Let's no forget My Heart Will Go On from the movie, Titanic. It gets you all lovey, weepy about a one night stand between a young couple who meet on the Titanic (hooking up wiht someone on a cruise is never a good idea). Rose and Jack end up floating in the icy waters of the Atlantic after the ship sinks. Rose is floating on a piece of debris and Jack is in the water holding on to her hand telling her never to let go. He freezes to death and Rose romantically breaks off his frozen fingers from her hand and lets him sink to the bottom of the ocean and as the song says, Rose's heart goes on.

Ouch.