It struck me today, as it does occasionally, that nearly all popular songs have the same theme: love. New love, enduring love, broken love, all-you-need-is love, and so on. Yes, the Beach Boys sang about cars and Steely Dan about god knows what, but they’re the exceptions.
Now why is this? The easy answer is that love is perhaps the most intense of human emotions (verging on psychosis when it’s new), and it’s a happy emotion. People want to write about what occupies them, and what pleases people and stirs their emotions. That’s why we don’t get many songs about death (unless it’s the death of a loved one, like “Last Kiss”) or depression. On the other hand, a substantial proportion of songs about love are about lost love, i.e., they’re songs laden with misery.
I’m not conversant enough with the history of music to know whether the proportion of popular songs devoted to love has changed over the centuries, although I know that some nice love songs (i.e., “The Water is Wide”) are at least four centuries old. Hell, I don’t even know what popular music was in medieval times.
So my question is this: why love? If the apocryphal Martian zoologist were to come to Earth, and discovered that we have music and we have love and other emotions, as well as food and machines and cats, but the zoologist didn’t really know Earth languages, could it predict that most music would be about love? I don’t know Bulgarian (though I’ll soon learn a few phrases for my trip), but I can confidently predict, knowing that Bulgarians fall in love, that most Bulgarian popular songs will also be about love.
p.s. While a lot of poems are about love, too, I’d guess that this is a much smaller proportion than one sees with songs.
Hit has long been my uninformed opinion that the entire music industry exists to ensure We humans mate – it’s the soundtrack of species preservation, the Cyrano that says for us what we don’t say as well. A callous way to put it is that music helps males “get” females, but however you roll it, comes up copulating.
And in the end, isn’t that what romantic “love” is itself? A brain chemical effect that makes us overcome reason and reproduce? I’m a father of five – maybe it’s just me, but I do speak from some experience …
Which is why I am a “man out of time” …
Check out this article, Man Out Of Time! 🙂
http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP0939
D’oh, my bad!
http://www.epjournal.net/wp-content/uploads/EP09390416.pdf
One of my favorite love songs.
My feeling is that “love” (and sex & booty whatevers) is cheap and easy. Sells like dogs playing poker on velvet.
Nick Cave has a whole lecture related to this – The Secret Life of the Love Song.
http://nickcave.com/music/spoken-word/the-secret-life-of-the-love-song/
Highly recommended (I admit I really like Cave). I’m sure that the text of the lecture can be found online somewhere, but it’s quite nice to hear him deliver it.
While digging dinosaurs in the Gobi Desert, we were entertained by nomadic herders. They sang beautifully. We asked “What do you sing about?” They answered “Oh…nomad songs are always about our mothers.”
Aww…
I think that may be a typo. What he probably said was:
“Nomad songs are always about your mother.”
(I wasn’t making it personal there, just going for pithy comedy. Dr Robert T. Bakker, author of Raptor Red? Honoured to meet you! Love the hat!)
I loved that books when I was in high school, but I just can’t read it these days: it’s just become so dated in its portrayal of maniraptors, you know?
The fountains mingle with the rivers,
And the rivers with the ocean,
The Winds of Heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion.
The first stanzas of Shelley’s “Love’s Philosophy.”
In my experience, more songs are about loss than love. More opportunity for loss.
Agree, more songs about loss than love. Perhaps more songs about longing than loss.
Since Professor Jerry will be visiting a former East European communist country, I post a piece of music I like in movie Dr. Zhivago http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8kmA0SkJFiA
Think about it, now only North Korea! 🙂
I listened to that sound track all the time when I was a kid!
“It struck me today, as it does occasionally, that nearly all popular songs have the same theme: love”
I remember making that observation to my mother when I was a child and her response was “Should we sing about hate?” That was about as deep as her thinking could go.
I still don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that I have always appreciated songs that have some other theme attached to them. My enjoyment of most songs depends on my being able to construct some visuals that the song is about, and that’s a lot harder to do with love-related songs.
“I remember making that observation to my mother when I was a child and her response was “Should we sing about hate?” That was about as deep as her thinking could go.”
Well… http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mgou7flUKqE
“I still don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that I have always appreciated songs that have some other theme attached to them.”
You and me, both.
Part of it is that new, popular music is bought and targeted to young people. Young people have a lot more effort and emotion invested in the dating and mating process than older folks, who have generally come to terms with it in one way or another.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s just copying what has gone before: “it’s a bypass – you’ve got to build bypasses”.
If music be the food of love, play on;
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The appetite may sicken, and so die.
That strain again! it had a dying fall:
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,
Stealing and giving odour! Enough; no more:
‘Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
O spirit of love! how quick and fresh art thou,
That, notwithstanding thy capacity
Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there,
Of what validity and pitch soe’er,
But falls into abatement and low price,
Even in a minute: so full of shapes is fancy
That it alone is high fantastical.
Shakespeare
Duke Orsino
Twelfth Night
Bravo.
“Excess of sorrow laughs;
Excess of joy weeps.”
– William Blake
I’d guess that this is an artifact of our obsession with the essential human project: reproduction. Or getting it on, as Marvin Gaye would have it.
I’m not really sure about the percent of total songs across time that take “love” as their subject, but while art (or “classical” – little ‘c’) music certainly never shied away from the subject, even in rather bawdy terms, I’d guess that there was a higher percent of religious/non-love songs in centuries past. Although, some were both. Song of Solomon, anyone?
Wow. Apologies for that unparsable sentence.
Although I don’t have figures, it is my impression that medieval popular music engaged with a broader range of subject matter than our own popular music does. Fortunately, they left us some of it.
Much of the extant medieval English music consists of ecclesiastical compositions, & works of the courtly upper classes (the situation for the Continent is likely similar, but my research is on late medieval England, so that’s where I’ll focus). Records of commoners’ music tend to be sparser—at least, if you want the full ‘song’: of pre-1400 folk songs from England *which include musical notation* perhaps 2 dozen survive in Middle English (ME), & approx. the same number in Anglo-Norman (AN) (French as it was spoken by the English ruling classes).[1]
If you are content with lyrics, however, the situation changes: we have over 2000 of those (cf. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0805/08052902).
The corpus shows significant variation in tone & subject matter. One especially overt difference between the ME & AN survivals is the proportion of courtly love lyrics. In the AN corpus, this subject matter predominates; in the ME, it is basically absent prior to the 1400s.[1]
We still see ME love songs, however. The oldest example for which both text & music survive is “Bryd one Brere” (Bird on a Briar) which was transcribed, ca.1300, on the back of a papal bull (Cambridge, King’s College MS Muniment Roll 2 W.32r).[2] The lyric evinces the kind of hyperbole we see in love songs even now: “Blythful biryd, on me, on me thu rewe / Or greyth, lef, greith thu me my grave” (Blissful bird, on me, on me have pity / Or prepare, love, prepare thou me my grave). Multiple interpretations of the work are possible, & this polysemy was probably intentional: wordplay & semantic stratification is highly characteristic of medieval English lyrics.
Not everything was chirping birds & sighing lovers, of course. Then, as now, the Battle of the Sexes spawned a measure of cynicism among some: http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medlyric/women.php
If people are curious, I can post a list of resources &/or links to medieval songs that aren’t about love.
Notes
[1] Lefferts, PM. “England”. Cambridge Companion to Medieval Music. Ed. M Everist. Cambridge: CUP, 2011. 107–120. At 111.
[2] Text & translation: http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medlyric/brere.php
A performance on period instruments: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ShODnBkAnec
“If people are curious, I can post a list of resources &/or links to medieval songs that aren’t about love.”
Yes, please! The equivalent of “popular songs”, which is what our host seems to mainly have wondered about, would in medieval times be the music of the majority of people, no? As far as I can see, that would have to be the songs of the poor, so aural traditions. Would you say that that’s a fair assumption? If so, then there is a possibility for music about love and sex in those centuries that we just can’t ever know about.
From my experience, which is mainly 16.,17. and 18. century western Europe, I’d say that love was as important a subject matter as death. And very often those two are linked together in a narrative.
Of course European music is just such a small sliver of all the world’s music traditions!..
I would say that those are very fair assumptions. Popular music in the medieval era was accessible to audiences across an unusually broad range of social classes. Still, it is undoubtedly true that the majority of the music of the common people is lost to us. (Working songs & drinking songs spring to mind here). There are numerous reasons for this including linguistic barriers, elitism, even possible resistance from minstrels. Also, medieval folk & popular customs were very local.
What has been preserved is the product of the literate classes, & usually clerics. In many cases, the motivation seems to have been rhetorical/suasory. One of the primary evangelizing tactics employed by the Church was public preaching in markets & squares. From the 1200s, we see sermons (esp. Franciscan) quoting vernacular — sometimes shockingly rude — works that they knew would be familiar & appealing to their target audience. Clerics also co-opted popular tunes & wrote new, religious lyrics for them. (Modern parallels will be too obvious to readers of this site to require further elucidation from me).
Non-religious & non-love songs did survive, though! Here are links to some, along with related resources. (The abbreviations are for websites; q.v. the biblio., infra).
*While I strove to be concise, I still must offer my sincere apologies to Ceiling Cat for the length of this post.*
NATURE:
– The most famous example is “Sumer is icomen in” (BL Harley 978, f. 11v; ca.1225–1250). The only surviving copy of this song appears in a 13th-cent. miscellany written at Reading Abbey, Berkshire. More details at WPWT: http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~wpwt/harl978/sumer.htm (navigation at top).
Peruse every folio of it here: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_978.
Also see:
BL: http://www.bl.uk/learning/timeline/item100326.html
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sumer_Is_Icumen_In
POLITICS & PROTEST:
– London, BL, MS Harley 2253 (‘The Harley Lyrics’). This “manuscript includes the largest single collection of early Middle English lyrics, which are otherwise only sparsely recorded, & is particularly important for the secular verse it preserves… ‘of the English religious pieces within the MS itself all but five appear elsewhere, whereas there is no other MS of any of the secular love-poems or political poems’…” (WPWT. http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~wpwt/harl2253/harley.htm; navigation at top).
A nice summary at MPS: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/haywardp/hist424/seminars/Harley2253.htm
You can also access The Harley Lyrics here: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=cme;idno=HarLyr
Note, however, that you will likely need this: http://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/med/
RELIGION:
– Saupe, K., ed. Middle English Marian Lyrics. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1997. TEAMS Middle English Texts Series. http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/publication/saupe-middle-english-marian-lyrics
An entire volume online & open-access courtesy of the wonderful folks at TEAMS & uRochester. Includes a great intro. with biblio., plus lyrics.
WARFARE & BATTLE:
The Agincourt Carol celebrates England’s victory at the Battle of Agincourt, 1415. Discussion at MPS: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/haywardp/hist424/seminars/Agincourt.htm
The Ballad of Chevy Chase is about the Battle of Otterburn (1388), & likely dates from the early 1400s. Text: http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/medlyric/chevychase.htm
Open-access paper: Perry, R. “War & the Media in Border Minstrelsy: The Ballad of Chevy Chase”. Ballads & Broadsides in Britain, 1500–1800. Ed. P Fumerton, A Guerrini, & K McAbee. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010. 251–269. http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/70002
GETTING WASTED:
Open-access scholarly sources for medieval English drinking songs are proving elusive (largely because few, if any, have survived), but here is an excerpt from an early 20th cent. textbook: http://www.bartleby.com/212/1607.html
plus, a version of the drinking song “Omnes Gentes Plaudite” performed by the Mediæval Babes: https://www.youtube.com/all_comments?lc=0KJi-UtFduMQmElGX5BjIKZLaPeUW2O7lYtLiCzd2Dg&v=BNTeJIJ0vgg
Chantilly, Bibliothèque du Musée Condé, MS 564 (olim 1047), fol. 59r: Solage’s “Fumeux fume”. A 3-voice rondeaux about the Parisian literary coterie ‘the Society of Fumeurs’ (‘smokers’). Given that the late 14th/early 15th cent. was a pre-tobacco era, Les Fumeurs were probably smoking hash (yes, they had hash in medieval Europe). Or the song is metaphorical. Your choice. It’s a French song in an Italian manuscript, but I couldn’t resist including it. Overview at MPS: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/haywardp/hist424/seminars/Solage.htm
ONLINE RESOURCES
Palti, K.R. “‘Synge we now alle and sum’: Three Fifteenth-Century Collections of Communal Song: A Study of British Library, Sloane MS 2593; Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1; and St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54”. PhD. diss. University College London, 2008. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/15578/
Open-access doctoral dissertation on three manuscript music collections from medieval England. Vol. I: thesis; vol. II: lyrics. The manuscripts discussed & transcribed are: (1) BL, Sloane MS 2593: 15th cent. 71 carols & other lyrics, many unique to this vol. (2) Bodleian, MS Eng. poet. e.1: ca.1460–1480; religious & secular songs & carols, in Latin & English, some with music. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/dept/scwmss/wmss/online/medieval/eng/eng-poet.html (scroll down). (3) Cambridge, St John’s College, MS S.54: carol collection, in English & Latin, dated 2nd 1/2 of the 15th cent. http://scriptorium.english.cam.ac.uk/manuscripts/images/index.php?ms=S.54&page=1
NB: In the medieval era, ‘carols’ were not songs about nor for Christmas, but songs with a repeated burden. See Daniel Wakelin’s excellent brief discussion, here: http://scriptorium.english.cam.ac.uk/resources/articles/pdf/wakelin_Johns_MS_S.54.pdf
DIAMM (Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music). http://www.diamm.ac.uk/
Provides “images & metadata for thousands of manuscripts [as well as] a home for scholarly resources & editions”.
MPS (Medieval Primary Sources). http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/staff/haywardp/hist424/index.htm
Lovely website for a grad. seminar at Lancaster U. (Contains more than just lyrics.
MSN (The Medieval Song Network). http://www.medievalsongnetwork.org/
“[A] research group founded in 2009 in London UK, uniting international scholars with broad interests in medieval song, from literary, musical, historical, linguistic, paleographical & other fields”. Features an excellent biblio, research, links, news, etc. Intended as a resource for medievalists, but the links, blogs, & biblio can be helpful for non-scholarly audiences.
Musicologie Médiévale. http://gregorian-chant.ning.com/
Ressources pour la musicologie médiévale—y compris les manuscrits, les outils de recherche, des bibliographies, etc.—met l’accent sur la liturgie. Entièrement en français.
[Incidentally, there are quite a few German language sites on this topic. I don’t have links handy because I cannot read German; MSN undoubtedly has links].
WPWT (Wessex Parallel WebTexts). http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~wpwt/
“[A] project which aims to link research & teaching by producing scholarly but accessible electronic editions as an on-line learning resource. … offers an anthology of edited Middle English lyrics (concentrating particularly on the ‘Harley Lyrics’), translations of some longer Middle English works, & background resources for use in teaching”.
BOOKS
Dobson, EJ, & FL Harrison, eds. Medieval English Songs. New York, 1979.
Duncan, TG. A Companion to the Middle English Lyric. Boydell & Brewer, 2005.
Greentree, R. The Middle English Lyric & Short Poem. Boydell & Brewer, 2001.
Hirsh, JC. Medieval Lyric: Middle English Lyrics, Ballads, & Carols. Oxford: Blackwell, 2008.
Hughes, A. Medieval Music: The Sixth Liberal Art. Rev. ed. Toronto: U Toronto P, 1980. Toronto Medieval Bibliographies, 4.
Thank you for all the information and the extensive reading list! (I’ll pray to CeilingCat to forgive our sins…) It’ll take me some days to work my way through it.
Do you yourself listen to recordings of medieval and early music much or are you purely interested in the actual sources? Just asking in case I come across interesting recordings.
NP!
I do listen to early music. The Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen was a prolific composer. Discantus (http://www.outhere-music.com/en/artists/discantus/about) & Anonymous 4 (http://www.anonymous4.com/) are two all-female a cappella vocal groups who cover her oeuvre very skilfully.
Parts of the Old Hall MS (BL, Add. MS 57950; ca.1415–25) have been recorded by several groups; look for versions by the Hilliard Ensemble. Thomas Tallis’ Spem in alium: technically English Renaissance, but glorious. I first heard it live prob. 15 years ago—recordings don’t do it justice! Still, for albums, look for The Tallis Scholars.
Sequentia (http://www.sequentia.org/) specializes in medieval music of all kinds; IMHO anything they do is prob. excellent. Ditto the Hilliard Ensemble & the Early Music Consort of London.
See: La Trobe U’s Medieval Music DB (http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/MMDB/); it’s no longer updated, but is user-friendly & incl. discographies.
Something different: Orff’s Carmina Burana is an early 20th cent. work for orchestra & voices, but the libretto was sourced from a medieval MS (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmina_Burana). Mostly I listen to swing & classical/opera, but when I run or work out, it’s punk & metal (seeing how many others here listen to these genres is sweet). Anyone who likes metal will like at least parts of Orff’s Carmina Burana, such as the 1st 3-ish min. here: youtu.be/AdIpoE2LEps Latin text: http://www.tylatin.org/extras/. Careful with the volume lest you disturb two city blocks’ worth of neighbours.
I wonder if there are songs that centre around life and death. I recall a lot of poetry that spoke of death – Pearl comes to mind as it is so sad to me.
Probably. Off the top of my head, I cannot think of any (my areas are codicology, & medieval law, popular protest, heresy) — plus, I’ve already posted too much in this thread. Some of the resources I listed earlier might have good information, though.
One that springs immediately to mind is XTC’s ‘Dying’, from their excellent Skylarking album.
Maybe you meant only earlier times, but here a variety of songs about life and death by John Dowland (1563-1626) who was such a great song writer in Baroque England. (I cut off the “you” so it doesn’t embed)
tube.com/watch?v=02H5dQhGsyw
tube.com/watch?v=H4jxuosItKE
tube.com/watch?v=vjuj0seroYI
And to come back at least in part to the host’s theme:
tube.com/watch?v=lfqX7q0oKgo
I was thinking mediaeval songs. 🙂
Thought you were 🙂
In current music – just thinking of musicals / operas for example – there’s a heck of a lot of songs dealing with death (usually of a lover, too). In fact the dying song in an opera is almost a stereotype.
Or, not from an opera – Danny Boy. (First that came to mind…)
Roger Taylor’s “Surrender” — about the suicide of a victim of spousal abuse.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SObRm6gxIkA
Does Dr. Horrible count? It’s not exactly about love. 🙂
Natalie – you don’t need to cut off the ‘youtube’, just cut off the ‘http://’ and the software will put it back on as a working link, but not imbed it, thus:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYjQduehTpM
(the link’s to ‘I Dreamed a Dream’ which is all about love gone disastrously wrong)
For an awful moment I thought that was going to be Susan Boyle …
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Umm, no 🙂
By chance, looking for the right link, I just listened to Susan Boyle’s version back-to-back with Lea’s. I think a comparison would be unfair. Besides which, Lea was singing it in character in Les Mis, so the emotional impact is so much stronger.
As it happens that version I linked (Lea on ?Broadway) was the first time I’d ever seriously listened to that song, and it hit me right between the eyes. I can’t think of a more despairing, angry song in music. (It was your mention of ‘Surrender’ brought it to mind, though the circumstances are a little different).
Well, I had no idea of the context of that song! (And I was surprised at how old Miserable Les is.)
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I had no idea of the context either, the first time I saw it. I knew nothing of Les Mis except it was a musical set in France. But the words tell you that Fantine is desperate.
I have found memories of singing a couple of John Dowland songs during my college glee club callow youth.
You know what else humans have produced a lot of music about?
Religion.
I’m currently stuck listening to some old gospel singer from the 50s at work. I’m doing in-home care, so it’s not exactly as if I can comment on what the person I’m taking care of wants to listen to, but after a couple hours of this and I’m going off the rails on the crazy train (yes, I plan to listen to a lot of Ozzie tonight after I’m off work).
I worked as a nursing assistant in times past. I empathize with you.
It may not quite qualify as medival, for this song was written at the end of the 1500s, but John Dowland also wrote about love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MV9hjIGUjgw
It’s basic biology, that touches all but the asexual. Of course humans have always written about it.
But I would imagine that in the past people also sang their oral histories and mythologies. Still do, I guess.
Blagodarya Jerry! You’re going to hear that a lot. Hope you like peppers 🙂
That’s websiteodarya! 😉
Is it like this
In death’s other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
I’m reminded of a story, possibly from the biography of a famous scientist, about a man who was visiting a foreign country where he didn’t know the language. A girl was giving him a ride somewhere, and a song was playing. She asked him if he knew what the song was about, and he said “It’s about love.” She was shocked that he had learned their language so quickly, but he admitted that he’d just guessed, because most songs are about love…
While in the U.S. Navy in the latter part of 1984, I was sitting at a Phuket, Thailand beach bar recovering from my latest metal and salt water-experience, and heard a beautiful melody sung by a Thai female singer over a local radio station. No doubt, it was a love song. It hit me like a ton of bricks. It was Ulysses and the sirens. I was motionless. How could I not do what it took to find the recording? I found it, and a second equally beautiful song. Over the years I made a couple of stabs at finding a Thai speaker to translate its lyrics. No joy yet, but I’m patient in my older age. I trust that the words will not disappoint.
Falling in love makes for a great story that touches on many human universals. We are in our local optimum, the comfort zone when cupid’s arrow changes everything. It is the herald’s call for adventure. Suddenly we feel uncertainty, have a fear of rejection but the adventure also promises a great boon where we have to explore and master unfamiliar terrain that is the other’s person’s character and his or her “world”. We have to overcome many an obstacle and figurative death that comes with the territory. All the problems that come with “getting to know” another person in just the right way. But there is not just dangerous territory that can spell doom with any clumsy step. There are also other humans with other interests that make for great enemies and allies, which we often have to assimilate (like convincing parents and their friends that one is a suitable match). Eventually, previous life ceases to be and is replaced by a new life together. And then that can get destroyed by all other things, jealousy, break up and all that which again taps into great many other emotions. This is a very Jungian or Campellian approach that has its limits in explaining anything, yet if the entertainment industry is any indication, they were “onto something” however esoteric their ideas may seem.
Then, of course, there are Darwian reasons that make people in love show how they are worthy to a potential mate. The worth might be expressed in artistic prowess. Of course I don’t think that writing love songs literally evolved like Peacock feathers, however, demonstrating skills we would classify as artisanal or intelligence skills could perhaps play a role in sexual selection. Someone who can write poems, sing and play an instrument perhaps indirectly shows skills that are deemed attractive on a deeper level.
Aren’t medieval songs and romantic or romanticized songs mostly about yearning and courtship and not about breakups and all the other love topics?
Culture might have discovered that writing and performing love songs articulates those skills in an effective way. It combines courtship, perhaps shows social skill; is associated with high standing (useless, but costly to delevop the skills?); maybe it shpws some skilfulness to play instruments; and it uses music which is still a mystery in itself, but seems related to communication.
Finally, love is a chief emotion that evolved to promote genes into the next generation. The loveless either died childless, or their offspring might not have the care human infants require to have offspring someday themselves. Do animals love each other? I think that is a reasonable idea. What else would forge them together, sometimes lifelong (like many birds)?
A crucial part in this take was that story-telling, music, communication and evolutionary functions are interlinked and perhaps love songs are a “super-supernormal stimulus”
Here is Steven Pinkers (with Richard Dawkins) on music and supernormal stimuluses.
http://www.musiccognition.nl/audio/Pinker-interview-2008.mp4
Which is taken from this full interview (youtube) Steven Pinker – The Genius of Charles Darwin: The Uncut Interviews (with Richard Dawkins
Frogs ‘rivet’ of love. Crickets ‘creek’ of love. Birds ‘twitter’ of love. Moose ‘bellow’. Wolves ‘howl’. Chickens ‘crow’. Humans write, sing and record, of love.
Eh, a bit iffy. Most of those animals are probably somewhere between infatuation and “I have an urge to do this thing, so heck why not hey a female gotta go!”
So, I wonder…what is it like to be a bat? (…in love).
The most intense human emotion is humiliation. People fight wars because 400 years ago their ancestors lost a battle. Of course, from an evolutionary point of view, humiliation is the flip side of love, since the publicly humiliated have a much reduced chance of getting their genes into the next generation.
One could perhaps go through the Child Ballads for a look to the past. A lot deal with love (both romantic and family) and a lot with betrayal.
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I guess most songs are about love because it’s an easy thing to write about without having to put too much thought into it.
Admittedly, this is my own experience, because I hate writing song lyrics.
Like literature and movies and art, inspiration is human first, i.e., love-centric, then something else: political, philosophical, anti-religious, spiritual (Harris-style), etc.. I grew up listening to (instrumental) jazz, progressive rock, alternative, and heavy metal. These genres of music possess an important vein which is loveless, but no less inspirational. Just an interesting and ironic aside, especially since the majority of (popular) music I have listened to my whole life is love-centric.
I was thinking, running through my music library in my head, that prog and metal seem to have far fewer love songs than “pop” does.
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My suspicion as to why most songs are about love is that the emotional charge of such an intense emotion makes it a particularly fertile topic for composition.
I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of the most memorable love songs are about love which is unhealthily intense and/or obsessive (e.g. Layla and Every Breath You Take), and would most probably result in a restraining order if acted out in reality.
My singing teacher complains that his male students often ask for songs that aren’t about love to sing. This makes life hard because there are so few of them.
Perhaps one can take solace that (so far?) there is no song singing the praises of unbridled capitalism.
“Money” by Pink Floyd? “I Want It All” by Queen?
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I took I Want It All as beyond material items.
Of course there are many pop songs that talk about material things as well as obtaining a lot of ladies.
“Fidelity Fiduciary Bank” from “Mary Poppins.”
The End of the Ship That’s Rising (While The Other End Goes Down) by Roy Zimmerman
Damn! Beat me to it! It took me about three microseconds to think of ‘Money’.
(Of course the Floyd were being satirical).
“Money – get back
I’m all right Jack keep your hands off my stack.
Money – it’s a hit
Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit”
and so on…
“Money Song” by Monty Python.
“Money (That’s What I Want)” by Barrett Strong.
Money For Nothing by Dire Straits.
No, here we go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1n5XqwUkYw
Love it.
I’m just glad I managed to post a link to YouTube without embedding it for once.
“Money for Nothing and your chicks for free”
See, it’s about love too. Well, sorta 🙂
“Money (That’s What I want)” by David Gray is a GREAT song.
If an alien were to come to earth perhaps this alien would just think we were stupid apes, like The Doctor sometimes does.
Well, I wonder if they would. The love song is essentially our mating process made art. For our species to reproduce successfully, we need to obsess about love. Picture humanity a million years ago. The survivors were those who could get it on in spite of the dangers of the environment and social conflict. A weak instinct for love making was selected against. And now, with the benefits and leisure of civilization, all that obsessiveness has to find an outlet. So, we sit down at the keyboard and rhythmically tap our a love song. Aliens would understand it as sublimation of primeval urges. Wasn’t there a song in the 1950s: “I’ve got Primeval Urges for You, Babe”
I once saw a TV episode of a series (can’t remember the name) in the 80s. It was about demons that would cause mischief on earth. One such demon married a woman and was telling a story to his demon buddy. He said that one day she caught him looking as a demon and although she saw him in all his devilry, she didn’t mind.
He destroyed her by suddenly telling her he didn’t love her. She killed herself and he found it so perplexing that a human would destroy herself over one person.
I often think of that episode when things get rough in life.
He’s not worth it. Get a cat.
I think the story applied to more than lost love – when you lose anything or you feel belittled by someone – to not take it so seriously because life is so much more. It was a brilliantly executed episode. Whoever wrote it did a marvellous job.
When I worked in Oman, around 2002, an Omani was driving me somewhere and he was listening to some local music emanating from a cassette; music that to me sounded quite religious. He was wearing the national Omani dress shirt with a colourful turban, listening with rapt interest. I soon asked him whether this was music about Islam. He looked at me and said, “No it’s a about a guy who have broken-heart because of a girl.”
Even Middle English poetry is like this with the theme that seemed to dominate the age: unrequited love. I seem to recall one where a man was imprisoned in a tower/jail and would see a maiden out the window each day but of course would never meet her.
Pink Floyd doesn’t do many (any??) love songs. That is one think I always liked about them. Not that I don’t like love songs.
Neither does Rush. It’s probably why I liked them too.
I read that when Paul McCartney was a Beatle, one of his aunts asked why all his songs were about love. “Can’t you write about a horse race or something?” she asked. Trying to stretch, Paul wrote “Paperback Writer.”
And his friend wrote one about walruses.
And then the Alan Parsons Project asked where it was.
Great band too. Red Barchetta and Spirit of Music are two of their best (IMO).
and Freewill – fitting to this site. 🙂
Rush can fly you into a black hole. No amount of love can compare to that.
Cygnus X-1
Ha! I just bought A Farewell to Kings this morning.
Then there’s Muse’s “Supermassive Black Hole” — and Threshold’s splendid cover.
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The Muse song is great.
Neil Peart writes much of Rush’s lyrics though Geddy Lee has come out identifying himself as a Jewish atheist fairly recently (much to the chagrin of religious Rush fans – who I didn’t know existed).
“religious Rush fans” — weren’t they paying attention to “Freewill”?
Rush is one of the bands from my teenage years that I’ve only just “discovered”.
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Indeed – I was surprised to learn Rush even has religious fans. Their should be a NOMA for Rush fans.
Woohoo for Rush!!! Nothing else to add, just Woohoo!!! (Oh, and no idea what La Villa Strangiato is about, just dig it 🙂 )
It’s about 9½ minutes …
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See #22.
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Probably also depends on the genre you are into. If you listen to metal you usually don’t have songs about love.
Rammstein’s Du hast almost fits though I guess they aren’t really metal.
Rammstein is very metal. And Du Hast is really more of an anti-love song, though not to the same extent as Amour or Stein Um Stein.
If you’re looking for more romantic stuff, you might want to check out Queensryche. And, of course, Def Leppard produced quite a few ballads but it’s a bit of a stretch to call those metal.
Which reminds me of the person who, having had no exposure to The Scorpions before he or she heard “Wind of Change”, reportedly said, “Funny. With a name like that, you’d have thought they’d be a heavy metal band…”
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and I should’ve written Du Hasst. I fell for one of Rammstein’s classic word tricks. 🙂
Du Hast is actually the name of the song. It only switches to du hasst during the lyrics.
Oh good I was right. I think I was confused because I read they released an English version called “You Hate”. It doesn’t really work in English.
German puns rarely du.
It’s a Gift. 😉
Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull has written nearly 400 songs but less than a handful are love songs – unless you call a song about “a long tall girl with a ladder in her stocking that you can climb” a love song.
In many societies dance is intimately connected to music. Dance can lend itself to a form of mate selection, where one can see how fit the dancer might be.
Including lyrics related to love of romance would only enhance the mate selection ambiance.
Dance and music seem to be interconnected in many (most?) folk musics.
Perhaps this connection is ancient, and the music/dance/mate selection aspect could explain why so many songs have lyrics about love.
OK, it’s a “just so story,” but not implausible.
Other than the need to eat and sleep, love, or the desire to procreate, is probably the one thing that the vast majority of us have in common.
I think this explains it quite well.
I think, more often than not, the theme is about unrequited love. Like in Linda Ronstadt’s ‘Long Long Time’ –
“And I never drew one response from you
All the while you fell all over girls you never knew”
or Eponine singing ‘On My Own’ in Les Mis
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjfmP7h3gBw
But these aren’t simple happy emotions – does Eponine look happy? I think the most memorable songs are about love lost or love gone wrong. Take Les Miserables (disclaimer: I’ve just discovered it), the characters everyone remembers aren’t Cosette who falls in love and lives happily ever after, they’re Eponine who dies in the arms of her never-was-her-lover, and Fantine who was betrayed in love and sings I Dreamed a Dream – one of the most bitter love-lost songs in music, if you listen to the words – and dies shortly thereafter. And I’d guess (wild guess!) this goes for most musical productions.
Next question – why does putting things to music have such a powerful effect in intensifying emotions. “Cue violins” may be a sarcastic reference but it’s based on an empirical fact known to movie producers. I doubt Eponine’s death would have such a powerful effect if there wasn’t a musical score, for example.
I’m wondering what evolutionary benefit there may have been to responding to music. In fact it must be a ‘spandrel’ if I understand Gould’s term correctly, since no generation before ours could have been able to listen to music of the sound quality that we’re used to. The sound my TV happens to be projecting at me right now – the Doctor Who theme – contains notes and timbres that can never have been heard by anyone a century ago, yet it grabs my attention and I respond to it instinctively. Why?
(OK, here’s another Reason for God – the Argument from Music. Which is, why are we equipped to appreciate fine music? – however you define it, whether Dr Who or Beethoven, it was never available to the masses in high quality before the last few decades. Therefore, God must have implanted this aesthetic sensibility in us.
I’ll admit this resembles Doug Adams’ ‘puddle’ analogy in that the music has been created to suit our aesthetics, but it still doesn’t really explain why our aesthetics are there).
Oops, I see Prof CC did note the prevalence of lost-love songs and I failed to acknowledge that in my comment. Sorry I missed it.
“the Argument from Music”
Counter argument: Christian music. Gakk!
I think I’m going to go all ‘no true scotsman’ on you. Surely ‘Christian music**’ is an oxymoron.
**As exemplified by the video Prof CC posted a couple of days ago. I will conveniently exempt Bach and the like from that definition. 😉
Love unrequited is a crushing yoke;
but if you see love as a game,
a trophy,
then unrequited love’s absurd, a joke-
like Cyrano de Bergerac’s odd profile.
One day a hard-boiled Russian in the theater
said to his wife, in words that clearly hurt her:
‘Why does this Cyrano upset you all?
The fool!
Now I, for instance, I would never
allow some bitch to get me in a fever…
I’d simply find another one-
that’s all.’
Behind his wife’s reproachful eyes there gleamed
a beaten, widowed look of desperation.
From every pore her husband oozed,
it seemed,
the lethal sweat of crude self-satisfaction.
How many are like him-
great healthy men,
who, lacking the capacity to suffer,
call women ‘chicks’ or ‘broads’;
it sounds much tougher.
Yet am I not myself a bit like them?
We yawn
and play at shabby little passions,
discarding hearts as though they’re last year’s fashions,
afraid of tragedy,
afraid to pay.
And you and I, no doubt, are being weaklings
whenever we so often force our feelings
to take the easier,
less binding way.
I often hear the inner coward whining,
from murky depths my impulse undermining:
‘Hey, careful now;
don’t get involved…’
I weakly take the line of least resistance,
and lose, who knows, from sheer lack of persistence,
a priceless chance of unrequited love.
A man who’s clever and can use his head
can always count on a response from women,
for poor Cyrano’s chivalry’s not dead:
it is not men who show it now, but women.
In love you’re either chivalrous
or you
don’t love.
All men of one law stand indicted:
if you can’t love with love that’s unrequited,
you cannot love-no matter what you do.
God grant us grace that we may know the pain
of fruitless longing,
unreturned emotion,
delightful torment as we wait in vain:
the hapless happiness of vain devotion.
For secretly I’m longing to be brave,
to warm my ice-cold heart with passion’s burning;
in lukewarm love affairs enmeshed,
I rave
of unrequited love and hopeless yearning.
1971
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Sexual selection. If birds can do it with feathery dances, why not humans?
Of course, culture and nature mix real well here, and there may be no prying them apart.
Found this for medieval music.
http://www.last.fm/music/Medi%C3%A6val+B%C3%A6bes
The song Greensleeves has been claimed to have been written by King Henry VIII to try to woo Ann Boleyn.
This appears to be rather dubious, but it is a song of love, and wikipedia has this to say:
“A broadside ballad by this name was registered at the London Stationer’s Company in September 1580,[1]”
So love songs certainly do go back a number of centuries.
After reading Wolf Hall (and realizing that was a fiction so I say this with tongue sort of in cheek), I think Henry only had to say, “hey, I’m King Henry” to Anne to seduce her. 🙂
He actually sang, “I’m Henry the 8th I am . . .”
Oh, it could get quite raucous.
http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-art-of-the-bawdy-song-mw0000293722
Cheers,
b&
Maybe it’s just because I was a teenager during the punk thing, with a lot of heavily politicised music and an anti-political backlash – “Keep politics out of music” etc – but I’ve always regarded songs about love as first and foremost the commercially safe option.
There is an interesting book called ‘The Art Instinct’ by Denis Dutton that suggests a link between evolution and human artistic preferences. I have it in my pile of books to reread.
Dutton did a TED talk called a Darwinian Theory of Beauty outlining the ideas in the book.
m.youtube.com/watch?v=PktUzdnBqWI
If it’s a song that’s not about love that you looking for, here are the opening lines to Tom Waits’s “How’s it Gonna End”:
He had three whole dollars, a worn out car
A wife who was leaving for good
Life’s made of trouble, worry, pain and struggle
She wrote goodbye in the dust on the hood
They found a map of Missouri, lipstick on a glass
They must have left in the middle of the night
And I… want to know the same thing
Everyone wants to know, how’s it going to end
The Dead Kennedys didn’t write songs about love… unless you include ‘Too drunk to…’ !!!
Ah, human universals! Gotta love them. 🙂
‘Muskrat Love’.
I’m sorry, the devil made me do it. I’ll get my coat…
(P.S. If you type ‘muskrat love’ into Google the fourth entry that comes up is WEIT)
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