From the emo songs that exploit emotions rather than convey them to the lyrical disasters that solely reiterate \I love to look at you,"" ""I love to touch you"" or just flat out ""I love you,"" the love song seems like a dying art form.
The lust song, however, seems alive and well. There was a time when all it took to master romantic music was a Barry White CD, and for the daring, some Marvin Gaye. These days, too much Motown on the shelf seems like a clue left by the clueless-the kind of clich?? lovingly shelved with drinking champagne out of the lady's shoe to candlelight. The seductive muted beats of Trip Hop, the raspy charm of jazz, even in the pop chorus' having people naked by the end of the song, lust seems easy to find in songs.
It isn't impossible to write songs that are genuinely moving and romantic and legitimately pull it off. Many of them have become old standards. ""If I Were a Carpenter"" is a hard song to ruin, written by Tim Hardin but covered by everyone from Johnny Cash to Bobby Darin. It's almost always performed with the same uncertainty about love that makes it so great from version to version.
""Paper Moon,"" recorded most notably by Ella Fitzgerald, seems to be one of these songs too, perfectly capturing how the world changes around a man in love every time someone records it. Great love songs may be difficult to write, but are gems after they are written.
Faking love is hard, too. Dashboard Confessional and John Mayer seem to prey on the feelings of adolescent girls in the same way that rap metal targets boys. It is unimpressive to do this, just as it is easy to shoot pick-up lines at girls at frat parties. What is impressive is that certain artists get away with such intellectually dishonest love. Emo is a genre full of saccharine love, but so is much of the singer-songwriter circuit. James Taylor never seems to have had an emotion he sings about.
To be fair, most of emo seems to focus on the mind-numbing pain after a relationship than the duration of a mind numbing relationship. But all of Dashboard's sensitivity is still less endearing than the far more vain look back at a relationship in ""Don't Think Twice it's Alright."" The brooding emo-man who loses the girl is faux sensitive. These are never songs about love, or losing love, but songs about what women want to hear-not an emotion, but a panacea. Give me insight any day. Give me Frank Black singing ""I have seen the face of God / And I have dearly paid.""
Lust and fake love have taken over and much of the beauty gets left out. Some of the best love songs are those which seem to capture the giddiness of love and not the slickness. The Canadian band Cub used to play a song called ""New York City,"" adorably including lines about how great it was to be walking around Bowery because the narrator fell in love. And it's that part of love I love, the part I always miss when I don't have it, surely not being a ""Slave 4"" some girl.
Maybe it is love itself that has gotten cheaper. The emotion has been made into an ornament, a postmodern term used in songs that don't seem to apply to anyone. What seems to hold back a lot of songs is the inability to be personal.
""Mesmerize,"" the Ja Rule and Ashanti song, is the equivalent of a frat boy beating his chest to proclaim sensitivity. A song going body part by body part (""[Ja Rule] Girl your stare, those eyes / [Ashanti] I love it when you look at me, baby"") is really nothing more than call and response (""Pretty / I like being pretty"") stretched into three minutes and placed over generic beats. It is a far cry from songs that describe very specific situations but allow the feelings to be generic.
Del Shannon sang the story of a man whose love was about to become a nun. But when the song crescendos to his asking Isabelle ""Does he need you more than I do,"" the feeling that love can defy even God seems to resonate more than three minutes of ""You've got nice legs.""
There is a certain luster missing now, a certain charm that is no longer there. With Valentine's Day coming up, the best music has to offer is glammed up and impersonal. I miss songs that made me miss love itself. It used to feel so easy to swoon over songs, and now it is so difficult.
Love is on the way to becoming musical fodder. It is more watered down and insincere than it once was. It is less genuine and more commercialized.
Or maybe the luster has just worn off.
