Thoughts on songs about love, or rather love songs...
 

Inspired by reading the Guardian (a newspaper here in rainy britain) earlier, I started to think about my favourite love songs. Not those silly ones about actually being in love, oh no, but rather songs that remind of love or break a person like love and you know... I'm not skilled with words enough to explain it, but I know that you know.
The article I was reading frames it thus:
Real love songs are very private affairs... ...Rather these are songs you listen to alone when you're alone falling in love, when you're up to your waist in it, when you're heartbroken. Secret songs you probably never tell your lover about...

Perhaps that makes a little more sense than my ramblings. Anyway! The author uses Nick Cave (Love Letters) and Leonard Cohen (Famous Blue Raincoat) as examples of such songs. Oh, and Van Morrison too.
So yes. What songs would I choose? If I write about them here am I giving too much away? Does anyone even care?

I need to open up more, even if it is to nobody I think. I've been retreating into myself for six months now and it's boring. Anyway, the songs, the songs. It's hard to know where to start really. I guess a lot of what I could write might be retroactively applied, and that would not quite be truthful and besides, just because I've not been in anything shaped like a relationship for years nowdoesn't mean that I've not fallen in love, just that I've grown better at shutting it away or just having different sorts than romantic relationships. Anyway the heart remains, and like anybody else, I'm wont to play songs over and over and over if they link somehow with what makes me who I am; those are the songs I want to write about here. Not songs that remind me of people that I have loved, though I'll probably slip by accident.

Octopussy by the Wedding Present, linked to its own memories. Let's just sit and talk about the usual things. It's pretty and sad and delicate, and that's what love is to me. Pretty and sad and possibly unattainable owing to the perception of how fragile it seems. Stockholm Syndrome by Yo La Tengo because it reminds me of cold hands, even if the lyrics probably don't mention hands in that context at all. These are my interpretations! Shady Lane by Pavement. Sure, it's one of the hits but when Malkmus lets slip that "you're so beautiful to look at when you cry", it's describing so many of the whirlpool dramas of passion and romance. The song sings cold too, and is washed out. But only in my mind perhaps. If they reformed tomorrow and played it, the kids would go wild. I probably would too and that would clearly make me a liar. Hummer by the Pumpkins. I could pick hundreds of songs by them, but Hummer soothes me, even if it's all nonsense lyrics. I'll take Galapagos for it's urgency and lack of pretention whilst being pretentious, because it's billy pumpkin. Jóga by Björk. Snowfall. You know? Women's Realm by Belle & Sebastian! I don't care whether you hear this! Girl, by PJ Harvey. No Children by the Mountain Goats. Landlocked Blues by Bright Eyes. That bit where R. Smith sings fly me to the moon in lovesong and he sounds so defeated. The ending of Rebellion/Lies by the Arcade Fire and Regine's last shout of Lies!.

These things are precious! Maybe only to me, but I know you must have your own precious musical associations too, and if you'd like to share them that would be good. No musical snobbery or indie/rock/pop-clique here, just the songs that saved your life and the like. So yes, my ramblings aside, share some songs that resonate with you. It'll be fun, I promise. Of course, we could just watch this thread slide slowly into oblivion too.
xx