I’ve been listening to quite a bit of The Magnetic Fields recently and pondering my freakish fondness of quirky love songs. The Magnetic Fields, in case you’re unaware of the fact, have released a magnificent three-volume work called 69 Love Songs, including gems with titles like “Chicken with Its Head Cut Off,” “Let’s Pretend We’re Bunny Rabbits” and “Kings of the Boudoir.” But my favorite love song by them isn’t from 69 Love Songs, oh no--it’s from an older album of theirs called Holiday, a charming little ditty called “Strange Powers.” Why? Because it’s a) the only love song I know of that mentions Thai hookers, and b) is actually more about consumerism than love.
No, I’m serious about the Thai hookers. Check the first verse out:
On a Ferris wheel
Looking out on Coney Island
Under more stars than
There are prostitutes in Thailand
Our hair in the air
Our lips blue from cotton candy
When we kiss it feels
Like a flying saucer landingAnd I can’t sleep
‘Cause you have strange powers
You’re in my dreams
Strange powers
When we kiss it feels like a flying saucer landing. I would kill to be able to come up with that sort of a simile, and Stephen Merritt does it ALL THE TIME.
The Magnetic Fields have also come up with the best gay love song of all time. It’s called “Papa Was a Rodeo.” It starts out with two men hooking up at a truck stop, and the chorus goes:
Papa was a rodeo
Mama was a rock and roll band
I could play guitar and rope a steer
Before I learned to stand
Home was anywhere with diesel gas
Love was a trucker’s hand
Never stuck around long enough for a one-night stand
Before you kiss me you should know
Papa was a rodeo
Which is all a fantastic set-up for the punchline in the last verse--which I won’t quote here, because you should listen to it. Seriously.
But the Magnetic Fields aren’t the only ones who have written fantastic, quirky love songs. I’m currently in love with Andrew Bird and his hyperliterate marvelousness. Take, for example, the first two lines of “Armchairs,” from Armchair Apocrypha: “I dreamed you were a cosmonaut of the space between our chairs / And I was a cartographer of the tangles in your hair.”
That, ladies and gentlemen, is poetry. Listening to that song makes me want to write a story, but then most Andrew Bird songs do. This is in contrast to The Magnetic Fields, whose songs have such a coherent narrative that I’d be hard-pressed to find anything to add to Merritt’s storytelling. Bird’s songs hit me in another place entirely; his songs have interesting skips and gaps, and I want to fill those gaps with details. Take, for another example, “Imitosis,” is really an anti-love song:
Poor Professor Pynchon had only good intentions
when put his Bunsen burners all away
And turning to a playground
A petri dish with single cells
That would swing their fists at anything that looked like easy prey
Nature’s show that rages every day
It was then he heard his intuition saywe were all basically alone
Despite what all his studies have shown
What’s mistaken for closeness
Was just a cast of mitosis
Perversely, I want to write a story about the professor--one in which he finds out that closeness is actually possible. Though I admit, I occasionally think up storylines in which he finds out he’s even more right than he ever imagined. It all depends on how existential I’ve been feeling.
What about you? What are some of your favorite love songs? I especially want to hear about the songs that make you either want to write stories, or that tell interesting stories themselves.
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I’m not sure this counts as a love song, but Life Less Ordinary by Carbon Leaf makes me want to write a story. The lyric “A little later on that year
I told you that I loved you dear
What do you know?
This you weren’t prepared to hear” evokes such complex thoughts. I’ve been ambushed with the words “I love you”. There is so much that I could do with that scenario.
When my husband and I got married last year, we gave away mix CDs to the guests of love songs. Quirky love songs. We had a songs about Joan of Arc getting burned at the stake, necrophilia, bestiality, getting killed by your lover, bloody highway death with your sweetie, and the utterly transcendent Kelly Hogan doing “Papa was a Rodeo"--live, accompanied by John Wesley Harding. She has an album version, too, which is just as good (we went with the live version because it was a show that we attended).
(Songs referenced in this post: an a capella cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Joan of Arc”, the Hoodoo Gurus’ “Dig It Up”, Guadalcanal Diary’s “Cattle Prod”, Nick Cave’s “Where the Wild Roses Grow”, and The Smiths’ “There is a Light that Never Goes Out”. Among others.)
Auf Achse by Franz Ferdinand - I dig the creepy-weird vibe and the melodic sections are divine
Waltz #2/XO by Elliott Smith - Again, creepy-weird, but there’s a stark beauty to it. Who is this guy? Who is the girl? Why did she marry the other guy? And I love the plinkety-plink piano melody that picks out the waltz.
Swamp Ophelia by The Indigo Girls - The music is just swoon-worthy for the first 2.5 minutes. Then they totally kill it for me. But the first 2 minutes are worth it.
Sweet Illusions by Ryan Adams - I could mention LOTS of his tracks, but this track is pretty stand-out. Gorgeous.
Me and Bobby McGee by Kris Kristoffersson. I don’t really need to explain this one, do I? It’s the ultimate song about finding (and losing) fulfillment in another person.
Enjoy the Silence by Depeche Mode - All I ever wanted, all I ever needed is here, in my arms… Says it all really
“Secret Love” by Doris Day
“I Won’t Say I’m In Love” sung by Susan Egan off Disney’s “Hercules” soundtrack
“Fools Rush In” by Ricky Nelson
“Slave to Love” by Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music
“Groovy Kind of Love” - I like Phil Collins’ version
I could add songs to this list for hours…
Oh, one more - filed under anti-love: “One more minute” by Weird Al Yankovic. No idea if it’s based on another song (like the rest of his work) but it’s a classic, anyway.
That first song gives a whole new meaning to the popular 70s phrase “Keep On Trucking.”
Off topic - I miss New Wave, but I figure the 80s revival will start any day now, so the music will come around again.
Oops, sorry, meant 2nd song, “Papa Was
A Rodeo.”
Weakest Shade of Blue, by the Pernice Brothers. Check this out:
“won’t you come away with me
and begin something we can’t understand
i’m as lonely as the Irish Sea
i’m as willing as the sand
could it be so wrong, so wrong?
could it be so wrong, so wrong?
won’t you come unbury me
could you light me up like a lemon grove
i’ll save you from this dreamy life
to the hardest love you could ever know”
Also, There is a Light that Never goes Out by the Smiths, O Soave fanciulla by Puccini, many of the Decemberists’ vaguely folk-ballady lovepop tunes, and of course, Sarah Silverman’s ‘German Cars’: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF81-dHxVwU
(Work safe, as long as no-one can here the horribly offensive lyrics. And I covet her hair.)
Ann said “Auf Achse”—nice.
My husband and I are heavily into Interpol. Saw them for the fourth time about three weeks ago. This is “Leif Erikson”:
Clock is set for nine, but you know you’re gonna make it eight.
All the people that you’ve loved, they’re all bound to leave some keepsakes.
I’ve been swinging all the time—think it’s time to learn your way.
I picture you and me together in the jungle—it would be ok.
I’ll bring you when my lifeboat sails through the night--
That is, supposing that you don’t sleep tonight.
It’s like learning a new a language.
Helps me catch up on my mime.
If you don’t bring up those lonely parts,
This could be a good time.
It’s like learning a new language
You come here to me--
We’ll collect those lonely parts and set them down.
You come here to me.
The one song that has followed me for years, begging for a story, is “Stage” by Live. He was a rock’n’roll messiah; she was known for her childcare....
I’m a sound and rhythm person. I purposely buy music for those reasons and most of the music I use and listen to is without lyrics. Maybe that’s why I don’t ‘see’ prose in books either, but go totally on the visceral and imagery.
ANYHOW, the only song that I can think of that I like that is a ‘love’ song is Amici’s “Whisper of Angels”. It’s so very very very pretty.
I actually saw the Magnetic Fields live once, at the Town Hall in NYC, and the opening act was none other than Andrew Bird.
Weird.
The part of the concert that sticks most in my mind, aside from my just enjoying the hell out of it in general (and Stephen Merritt swigging from the flask of whiskey on his music stand), was at intermission when the lights came up, and my boyfriend (who is six foot three and about 130 pounds and, can you guess, works with computers for a living: his kung fu fighting style is known as Runs The Fuck Away) looked around the room contemplatively.
“Hey,” he said.
“What?”
“I could beat up any guy in this room,” he said.
I looked around.
It was true. He was probably the burliest, most macho dude there.
It was awesome.
I’m totally into Billy Bragg these days. He may be best known for writing poppy protest songs, but my god--he packs a romance novel of emotion into some of his 4 minute love songs. He’s got nonsexual devotion (Milkman of Human Kindness), still stuck in love (The Price I Pay, Must I Paint You a Picture?) tension of dreams vs domesticity (Brickbat) and sheer joy (The Boy Done Good) all covered. It’s all in the details, like from “A Lover Sings"--"kissing on the carpet, your tights around your ankles"--bingo. You can have me.
The sweet and simple love song that my partner and I still dance to is ‘Magnolia Street’ by Catie Curtis, which starts out
I knew that I loved you the first time you got into my car
and moves to
And I feel like I’m going home
but not to the one I’ve known
which is just how it felt to find the person I’m spending my life with.
Speaking of gay love songs, how about the Lyle Lovett/Keb’ Mo’ duet version of ‘Till It ShInes’ which I TOTALLY read as a gay duet and love love love.
My favorite tortured love song that also tells a story is ‘The Origin of Love’ from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. YouTube video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ll3KO-wtVSY (the animation makes it even better).
That’s just what came off the top of my head.
“Penelope’s Song” by Loreena McKennitt just breaks my heart. What else would a wife waiting endlessly for her husband sing, but “I will keep your heart with mine, ‘til you come to me”?
And the duet “As Long as You’re Mine” from the musical Wicked. We will love each other as long as we can, and not regret a moment. le sigh
Oooh, I love the Magnetic Fields - and Andrew Bird. “Armchairs” is on my most recent iPod playlist, as a matter of fact and “All the Umbrellas in London” is one of those songs whose imagery gets in my head and won’t get out.
But there are two songs that really make me want to sit down and write. One is “If You See Her, Say Hello,” by Bob Dylan. They had a fight and she went to Tangiers! How can you leave it like that, Bob? I need to know the rest! I WILL write a book with that title someday, I am determined. I even have plot bunnies to go with it. The other is “Love You ‘Til the End” by the Pogues. A little McGowan lyrical brilliance for your morning:
“I just want to see you
When you’re all alone
I just want to catch you if I can
I just want to be there
When the morning light explodes
On your face it radiates
I can’t escape
I’ll love you ‘til the end.”
It’s actually one of McGowan’s least narrative songs, but there’s something about it that grabs my imagination. It’s all so very simple, in lyrics and in melody - it’s just begging for a story.
As Magnetic Fields songs go, I’ve always been partial to “I’m Sorry I Love You,” which I hope to God somebody sends the sheet music to Dolly Parton one day soon.
Lately fell in love with “Kissing the Lipless” by the Shins. It’s more about love that’s passed on, lingering hang-ups, and a twinge of jealousy that the other person may have it better without you than with you.... Great song to sing to, too.
Called to see
If your back
Was still aligned
And your sheets
Were growing grass
All on the corners of your bed
But you’ve got too much to wear
On your sleeves
It has too much to do with me
And secretly
I want to bury in the yard
The grave remains of a friendship scarred
-edit-
You’ve tested your mettle
On doe skin and petals
While kissing the lipless
Who bleed all the sweetness away
I’m hopelessly inspired by anti-love songs. “Fast Car” by Tracy Chapman. “Hero Takes a Fall” by the Bangles.
“Flying Colours” by Jethro Tull has to be the ultimate description of a dysfunctional couple, and I love it so, so much.
This might explain why I’m perennially single. ;-)
I love so many Magnetic Fields songs, it’s hard to identify a favorite. I love My Only Home. It’s so simple, and so sweet. I think my favorite love song of theirs is When My Boy Walks Down the Street and I’m Tongue Tied is also great. I have a lot of their songs, but I don’t have the tracks you mentioned. I’ve definitely got to expand my MF collection.
My favorite band is Wilco, and they have some exquisitely perfect love songs. Reservations is probably my favorite:
How can I convince you it’s me I don’t like?/Not be so indifferent to the look in your eye/when I’ve always been distant/and I always told lies for love/I’ve got reservations/about so many things/but not about you
They have a song called Either Way off their latest album, Sky Blue Sky. It just strikes me as a very mature song. It’s not angsty, though the subject matter is. The guy is in love, and he always will be, but he’s not crazy about it. Maybe you still love me/Maybe you don’t/Either you will or you won’t/Maybe you just need some time alone/I will try to understand/Either way I’m gonna stay/right for you.
This song by Geof Manthorne
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZiL9N_YLxM
To me it’s a song about growing up and finding that person to spend the rest of your life with.
I could be projecting though. Geof is my TV boyfriend...so cute!
I didn’t want you to see me like this
So frightened of losing so soon
How I want, how I want to deserve you
And if I’ve caught our love in a grip
Just tell me and I’ll shake it loose
How I want to deserve you
Bette Midler - To Deserve You
I hear you’re driving someone else’s car now
She said you came and took your stuff away
All the poetry and the trunk you kept your life in
I knew that it would come to that some day
Concrete Blonde - Caroline
Sweet, sweet Jane
You’re waiting
For Jimmy down in the alley
Waiting there
For him to come back home
Waiting down on the corner
And thinking of ways
To get back home
Cowboy Junkies - Sweet Jane
Two songs that I think offer up interesting story elements are:
Stay by Shakespear’s Sister
Building a Mystery by Sarah McLachlan
Everytime I hear either one, I think “I’d read that book”. I don’t know if it would be a good book, but I’d read it!
I love “Walk Through Hell” and “Alive with the Glory of Love” by Say Anything. Most of their songs have a very story-like element to them, but those two are my absolute favorites.
Man, the Magnetic Fields are strangely hypnotic. I can listen to them for hours. I think they’ve written two of the most beautiful/horrible death of love songs in the world. (And they pack a 1-2 punch on 69 Love Songs vol. 2) Grand Canyon and No One Will Ever Love you can reduce me not to tears, but a state of complete melancholic inaction. Seriously,
“If I was the Grand Canyon
I’d echo everything you say
but I’m just me
I’m only me
and you used to love me that way
so you know how to love me that way.
If I was Paul Bunyan
I’d carry you so far away
but I’m just me
I’m only me
and you used to love me that way
so you know how to love me that way.”
followed directly by
“If you don’t mind why, don’t you mind? Where is your sense of indignation?
You are too kind.
Much too kind.
Where is the madness that you promised me?
Where is the dream for which I paid dearly?
When things go wrong I sing along.
It is the nature of the business.
But you’re not here to make my sad songs more sincere.
No one will ever love you honestly
No one will ever love you for your honesty.
No one will ever love you honestly.
No one will ever love you for your honesty.”
and what I can never figure out at the end is if it should be punctuated, “No one will ever love you, honestly.” as if it’s a parenthetical statement at the end there or if it is, “No one will ever love you honestly.”
Either way, it’s crushing. And haunting.
Now I’ll try and think of love songs that aren’t soul crushing downers. I’m sure I know some of those, too.
Man, I’m ramble-y today.
I’ve always loved love songs with great lyrics that make me laugh even when they talk about great affection - so I’ll have to go with Tom Lehrer’s “Masochism Tango”:
I ache for the touch of your lips, dear,
But much more for the touch of your whips, dear.
You can raise welts
Like nobody else,
As we dance to the masochism tango.
Let our love be a flame, not an ember,
Say its me that you want to dismember.
Blacken my eye,
Set fire to my tie,
As we dance to the masochism tango.
At your command
Before you here I stand,
My heart is in my hand. ecch!
Its here that I must be.
My heart entreats,
Just hear those savage beats,
And go put on your cleats
And come and trample me.
Your heart is hard as stone or mahogany,
Thats why Im in such exquisite agony.
My soul is on fire,
Its aflame with desire,
Which is why I perspire
When we tango.
You caught my nose
In your left castanet, love,
I can feel the pain yet, love,
Evry time I hear drums.
And I envy the rose
That you held in your teeth, love,
With the thorns underneath, love,
Sticking into your gums.
Your eyes cast a spell that bewitches.
The last time I needed twenty stitches
To sew up the gash
That you made with your lash,
As we danced to the masochism tango.
Bash in my brain,
And make me scream with pain,
Then kick me once again,
And say well never part.
I know too well
Im underneath your spell,
So, darling, if you smell
Something burning, its my heart.
Excuse me!
Take your cigarette from its holder,
And burn your initials in my shoulder.
Fracture my spine,
And swear that youre mine,
As we dance to the masochism tango.
Beneath my somewhat ordinary, unexciting image, lies a wild child who lurrrves the early 1980s stuff from The Waterboys. Raw, earthy passion combined with fantastic, strong musicality. Whoa.
The hero in my current book is a wild loner who has done time in jail and survived Sydney’s criminal world, and he’s got Waterboys theme music - Pagan Place, Savage Earth Heart, This is the Sea, and the most moving love song ever for alpha guys, Trumpets.
Okay, now I’m gonna have to put The Waterboys on really, really loud again - just as well the DH is off walking the dogs :-)
“First Day of my Life” by Bright Eyes, particularly for this verse:
Remember the time you drove all night
Just to meet me in the morning
And I thought it was strange,
You said everything’s changed,
You felt as if you’d just woke up,
And you said, This is the first day of my life
I’m glad I didn’t die before I met you
But now I don’t care, I could go anywhere
With you and probably be happy
It kills me with sweetness, as does the video: people listening to the song, often with their loved one beside them, and it’s just lovely.
One of the best opening lines in a sort-of-but-not-quite love song is from Holly Cole—“Make it go away or make it better/Isn’t that what love’s supposed to do/Make it go away or make it better/You know that’s what I would do for you”.
The poem that I always recite to myself when I need an antidote to love gone bad is one I read as a teenager. I don’t remember who wrote it, but it goes:
When you’re away
I’m restless, lonely,
tired, bored, dejected, only
Here’s the rub my darling dear
I feel the same when you are near
These are all, to me, beautiful little jewels. If I had nothing but a single CD with me on a desert island, I’d want these songs on it.
“Original Sin” by Elton John
“On a Beach” by Richard Ashcroft
“Stolen” by Dashboard Confessional
“At Last” by Etta James
“I Love You” by Sarah McLachlan
“Head Over Feet” by Alanis Morissette
“Wildflower” by Sheryl Crow
“Chariots Rise” by Lizzie West
“The One I Love” by David Gray
“Love Song” by Tesla
If anyone wants them, I’d be happy to upload them to Mediafire or YSI.
Actually, my very favorite love song is “Book of Love” from 69 Love Songs. Followed very, very closely by “Head Over Feet” by Alanis Morissette. Both seem to have been written for my marriage.
Oh Yes! Also “And So It Goes” by Billy Joel. Makes me cry, that song.
And “I Melt with You” by Modern English. How could I forget that song?
My spam word is “along13”. I’m sure there are at least 30 more songs I’ll think of as soon as I hit the submit button.
I am a huge walking pile of sap, and “Overjoyed” by Stevie Wonder somehow always drags up a story somewhere for me. Also, slightly less sappily but still pretty high on the cheese factor, “King of Pain” by The Police. And “Lovesong” by The Cure.
I really WAS born in the 80s.
I have to admit that I love Think of Me from Phantom.
However, the love songs that are wierd that I listen to are by Tsukiko Amano.
Hisui - it sounds like a love song but is more of a post-breakup song
Chou - brings to mind killing your twin in a haunted villiage (used as the end to Fatal Frame II)
Koe - Nothing says love like cutting off your feet and having your vocal cords ripped out…
but the wierdest of them has to be Koi because even with the translation none of it makes sense.
You can hear them all on youtube if you search Tsukiko Amano, and the translated lyrics are here:
http://www.kiwi-musume.com/lyrics/amanotsukiko/amanotsukiko.htm
There’s a musical by Jason Robert Brown (who’s a frickin’ genius, by the way) called The Last Five Years. It’s a two person show about a failed marriage between two twenty-somethings, Jamie and Kathy. This is not normally the sort of thing I go for. I like my ever afters happily, thankyouverymuch, and any storyline which incorporates one partner being unfaithful to the other makes me queasy (apparently this is hereditary--my grandfather walked out of a production of Camelot). That said, this show works for me.
JRB, awesomely creative dude that he is, wrote the show so that Kathy begins at the end of the marriage, and Jamie at th day they met. As it’s written, the two are onstage together only once, and it’s for their wedding, a song entitled “The Next Ten Minutes.” The lyrics read:
Will you share your life with me
For the next ten minutes?
For the next ten minutes
We can handle that
We could watch the waves
We could watch the sky
Or just sit and wait
As the time ticks by
And if we make it till then
Can I ask you again
For another ten?
The whole tone of the song is sweet and uncertain and just sings to me of possibilities despite the very final concept of the show.
“I’d Give it All for You” from Songs for a New World is another great JRB tune with a story to tell. But then, I pretty much recommend anything by him!
For a story I just wanna fill in, ABBA‘s The Day Before You Came is the best ... I’m not even sure it’s a love song, but it could be - it could be about anything, a good event or a terrible one. The music builds up atmospherically in contrast to seemingly boring lyrics - describing yet another mundane, unfulfilling day in the persona’s life before she met this mysterious other.
For sheer quirkiness and cuteness, “Birdhouse in your soul” by They Might Be Giants always makes me smile:
“Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I’m the only bee in your bonnet
Make a little birdhouse in your soul”
but some of the best love songs I know were written by Crowded House from New Zealand, and this is one of my favourites:
“When you come to cover me with kisses
Fresh like a daisy chained up in a lion’s den
I’ll know you by the thunderclap
Pouring like a rain of blood to my emotions
And that is why I stumble to my knees
And why underneath the heavens
With the stars burning and exploding
I know I could never let you down”
- When You Come
The metaphors are powerful and evocative and the music so joyful.
A website that reviews romance novels from a couple of smart bitches who will always give it to you straight. No bullshit. No gushing--unless the author really deserves it.
I’m with Leah. There are some people you canNOT critique. If your friend is gonna get butthurt/insulted, or hate you, or ignore you, do not waste your time. The letter writer’s friend sounds like one of ‘em.
Examples…
My father, a poli sci professor, is driven nearly insane by this every time he assigns papers...and yes, he marks them up with demands for source material citations and docks their grades
I know this is an old post,…
i also have kids krsylu, and cannot stand m/m but will read f/f at will hehe and this thread is out of control, shouldent we start a new one?
I was interested in this movie until I started seeing trailers. I keep expecting Edward to break out a little Right Said Fred.
From Creepy Stupid
Sometimes I’m reluctant to admit that I read romance, because of the stereotype (and my own horrible, horrible early experiences with some titles).
But I am a kajillion times more likely to admit to being a romance fan…
From Half Time Penalties
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08.17.07 at 04:06 AM |