Fail the Love

You know, after a lifetime’s supply of pop music, I’m sick of hearing about love. And tired, tired, tired of the repetition and laziness of lyrics that have been puking their way through most love songs for oh, forever probably. That said, I can still remember that magic moment of turning 16 and all the free-for-all fun I had being almost an adult, discovering sex (well, the fact that it was now permitted and was, technically at least, close by) and trying to get to it via almost any means possible. Then these vomit-inducing songs were my best friend, or next to at least.

Like most boys of that age, what I lacked in every department except kissing, I made up for in the ‘telling my girlfriend whatever it was she wanted to hear if it got me nearer what I was fixated on’ department. It took over a year to find the right combination of sharing of romantically inclined records and generally appearing to fulfil her wishes to get myself in a position where sex was actually a possibility, at least in my mind. Yes, all the good things in life joined hands and found me someone who actually fancied me enough to consider making her body available.

I won’t pretend that we were really in love, but we were consumed by each other on a physical level. We were certainly love-magnets, charged by each other and the idea that we both wanted the same thing: looking back, I think we may have deceived ourselves and each other on that one.

But lust didn’t last and we were subjected to a series of firsts – arguments, half-truths, exaggerations, lies and all rounded off with my first ever bust up. Live, learn, return to the hunt.

The music helped ease the way in and out of that and other relationships, but I can’t say that too many of the millions of ‘I love you, I really do’ singles I was armed with beat many paths to many bedrooms. Hardly any in fact. They might have demonstrated a connection between myself and my next passion pal – in that we both liked the song or the band or their clothes – but a little bit of flat black vinyl almost never got me near the rosebud lips I wanted to make my own.

Now, unfortunately for those of us who’ve been around for a little while, decades of listening to ‘La la, la, I love you.’ doesn’t make you deaf to the message. It makes you sick of it. Very, very sick of it. To the point where you want to tear your radio out of the dashboard and hurl it out the window if they play any more of that shit.

But it’s unlikely that radio stations will stop playing this dross while teenagers – mainly boys in my experience – still believe what I believed, that playing a sweet ‘n’ sticky love song to some lucky female is going to get them into either their hearts or their knickers.
While we’re here let’s take the opportunity to give record companies a few slaps for the delight they take in exploiting young would-be lovers by robbing them of their limited incomes with lies and delusion. You might think that every new generation needs it loves songs, and maybe that’s true, but nothing that means that my ears have to go on being infected and insulted by this unimaginative and puerile bollocks until I die, should be allowed to continue.

And it’s not like you can escape: for example, why the fuck do I have to listen to this crap when I’m getting petrol? If there has to be music, why can’t it be classical or jazz? Or is it that only 16 year olds own cars? Better still, why not play nothing at all and pass the royalty and equipment savings on to customers? I think we’d rather have cheaper fuel so we can drive around forever on the highway of love listening to music we’ve chosen ourselves. Or is that concept too hard for oil companies to understand?

Anyway, getting back to a mental state nearer to nil on the relax-o-meter, something I’ve not mentioned is the fact that there are plenty of people out their capable of writing excellent love songs I not only enjoy hearing but I know stand a much better chance of getting me laid – should the need arise. I’m not going to write a massively comprehensive list, none of us want to be here all night, but how about Tom Waits’ Picture in a Frame? Or the Cure’s Lovesong? The latter showing that it is possible to write a love song that breaks the mould and gets itself into the charts as well. 10cc’s I’m Not In Love didn’t so much break mould as nuke it all the way to Hell. Finally what relationship can ever hope to get off the ground without the help of Barry White’s You’re My First, My Last, My Everything? (I’ve avoided Marvin Gaye’s Sexual Healing because, although it’s a very fine song, it’s one that comes much later in a relationship, week two perhaps.)

And this is just a tiny example of top love hits that dared to be different and got their just rewards. Of course, record companies were responsible for releasing these songs, but I think given the choice, they’d pinch their noses and stick to the bland crap that populates most of the charts, most of the time. And with the exception of Barry White (and Tom Waits, who does what he likes and to hell what with the world thinks – an attitude many recording artists could do with emulating), most of the artists that do buck the trend do so from the safety of being certifiable hit writers.

So what is the solution you ask? Well, we have two choices. These purveyors of MOR juvenilia should shut the fuck up and wait until they’ve got something to say that’s worth hearing, or the state should intervene and keep male teenagers on drugs that suppress their libido until they reach the age of consent. Once that’s been reached, they should be bussed en-masse to the nearest brothel armed with some bulk-buy discount vouchers, a party pack of condoms and the number of the nearest clap clinic. And perhaps the details of a counselling service.

The latter might seem a bit radical to you now, but get back to me in another 20 years and we’ll see how you’re feeling. I reckon a few more decades of your ears and mind being bent out of shape from being force-fed vapid and repetitious nonsense will have you screaming into your fuel tank for silence.