The song of love is a sad sad song (etc.)

Given my speculations on the possible superiority of love songs over the thing itself, I feel duty bound to volunteer a few of my favourites in the genre. Love songs, that is, not loves. Although, not surprisingly, the songs that see us through assert their claims through association. Certain songs absorb as much as they impart, like sponges of sentiment. It’s time I gave them a squeeze.

Not surprisingly, most of the songs I value most are of the melancholy kind, for, as I never tire of asserting, or letting Nick Cave assert for me, “I believe the Love Song to be a sad song. It is the noise of sorrow itself”. Or, as he more melodramatically puts it, with reference to his own clutch of such, “lifelines thrown into the galaxies by a drowning man”.

And yet, not all love songs are obviously sad, and not all are ballads. A few manage to cover up the tracks of the tears with a convincing ecstatic mask. As we’re just setting out, I should fill the floor not your hankies, so let’s start with some of the very few happy, toe-tappy love songs in the Helioholic’s hit parade. In no particular order, and in sporadic instalments here’s some of my favourite love songs.

Just to spite him, I’ll start with a rare instance of up-beat love lyricism from Mr Cave himself. Now, generally, love is a fairly anguished business for our old Nick, and I’ll have a few choice examples of this more characteristic mode in good time. Love is more likely to have him reaching for a handy rock – “for all beauty must die” (‘Where the Wild Roses Grow’, from Murder Ballads) – than standard sentimental endearments. Which is why ‘Breathless’ from The Lyre of Orpheus is a surprising little gem. Nick, happily married Nick, doesn’t sing about love much these days, because contentment doesn’t suit his muse. But this finds his satanic majesty full of the joys of spring, with nature chorusing his happiness.

“It's up in the morning and on the downs
Little white clouds like gambolling lambs
And I am breathless over you”.

(The heavy smoking Cave, getting up early and striding across the Sussex Downs, might have something to do with this condition, but I won’t spoil the moment for him). There’s a plaintive flute weaving in and out of the simple acoustic accompaniment, suggesting a merry troupe of minstrels prancing along behind the besotted Bad Seed whose let love in. And how.

“The happy hooded bluebells bow
And bend their heads all a-down
Heavied by the early morning dew
At the whispering stream, at the bubbling brook
The fishes leap up to take a look
For they are breathless over you”.

It’s surely the mark of genius when an artist can go so far left-field of his usual patch so convincingly. And yet, he’s changed the tempo, changed the tone, but the anguish is still just beneath the surface and between the lines. This is still a lifeline from a drowning man. The clue’s in the title.

"I listen to my juddering bones
The blood in my veins and the wind in my lungs
And I am breathless without you".

He kinda means it, somehow turning a rather sweet little ditty into a visceral immolation before the beloved. You just can’t keep a good Goth down.

And this applies equally to one of the most perfect Emo-anthems to love, ‘Just Like Heaven’ by The Cure. Big sounds, Big hair, are usually a Big turnoff for me, symbolised by one of the aural nadirs of a dodgy decade: The Alarm. But it’s difficult not to have a sneaking admiration for Robert Smith, who found a look and stuck with it, long after the backcombed bandwagon left town. Dear Robert is just a bit too cuddly to be a scary Goth, or convince us with the shadow puppet diablerie of his suburban psychodramas. Bless, this Creepy from Crawley can’t even put his lipstick on properly, and you can almost imagine a fussy aunt giving him a spit wash with a hankie to clean up the proper mess he’s made of it while he wriggles teetchily from her grasp. Michael Bracewell clinched it in his brilliant book, England is Mine, when he said in Smith’s songs “the soul is not so much bared as reduced to wandering around in its dressing gown all day”.

But that’s just why a song such as ‘Just like Heaven’ is so perfect, and speaks to tortured suburban romantics everywhere. Boys do Cry. Love is big, and its emotions are big, even when worn moochily by gauche adolescent suburbanites. It captures something of the child-like glee of love. Partly through the tumbling jangle of heart-catchy guitars (making Altered Images sound like Slipknot), and partly through the wide-eyed love-stoked wonder of Smith’s lyrics:

“Show me show me show me how you do that trick
The one that makes me scream" she said
"The one that makes me laugh" she said
And threw her arms around my neck
"Show me how you do it
And I promise you I promise that
I'll run away with you
I'll run away with you"

It should be fey, but somehow it isn’t. (A grown man with a thatched head and fright slap gushing thus). But twee soon turns Wagnerian, as Wuthering Heights comes to Worthing on Sea.

"Daylight licked me into shape
I must have been asleep for days
And moving lips to breathe her name
I opened up my eyes
And found myself alone alone
Alone above a raging sea
That stole the only girl I loved
And drowned her deep inside of me".

In other words, I woke up and it was all a dream. Too much Merrydown on a Sussex cliff and this is bound to happen. Yet it has everything in this song to delight the sensitive suburban soul. Soaring from glee to Goth gloom in 3 perfect minutes. A soaring love anthem for the eternally lost and lonely.

Finally, and this might surprise you, but what romp through the vinal vales of lyrical loves past would be complete without ‘Come on Eileen’? Yes, I know it’s been tarnished by overexposure, with faux school discos flogging the dead horse of popular nostalgia, but I still really love this song. It is a landmark for me, as one of the very rare instances when I like what everyone else likes and join in a national enthusiasm. I usually go the other way in principle, but not this time. Few people don’t like ‘Come on Eileen’, and everyone loved it when it reached no. 1 in the summer of 1982. It floated from countless open windows, capturing the youthful mood of summer. Agreed, it’s rather pompous, Rowland is a plonker, and their charity shop Romany Romanticism fooled no one. But sometimes you’ve just got to go with it. It was the year of my first proper love, and my first broken heart. But not yet, when Dexys topped the charts and stomped the boards, that love was at its height. It was the very sound of love, and I was happy to stomp along to its tune, forgetting all in adolescent abandon. An instant exit from Croydon. For that is what it is about. Escaping, the destined drudgery of background:

"These people round here wear beaten down eyes
Sunk in smoke dried faces they're so resigned to what their fate is,
But not us, no not us we are far too young and clever.
Remember Toora Loora Toora Loo-Rye-Aye
Eileen I'll hum this tune forever".

He’s right. We have. Forever 15 and in first love, restored by a record.

(I've no idea how to embed Youtube widgets like the clever blogs do, but here are the links. Enjoy.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb45RkfWjV0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ThWaMnlSZM&feature=PlayList&p=1598BC8EB2044468&playnext=1&index=57

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5StFADI9NM