Love Songs...

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BRIGGS

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I really think this cliche has been completely worn out.

is there any angle on romance and heartbreak that hasn't been explored???

I'm getting so sick of it!!! I hear some good music and then the lyrics "F" it up big time.

I'm really not that hard and cold!!! I just think there are more aspects to love than just romance and heartbreak.

How about love applied to friendship or family???

ok maybe we hate our friends and family???

seriously!!! does every thing have to be... boy meets girl... boy loses girl... boy is so depressed... yada yada yada!!!

I think that, as a society of musicians, we are in a serious rut here.

Briggs
 
Love Songs

Joro,

You crack me up man!! LMFAO!! Nuthin like puttin' that "cheese" right out there man!

On a more serious note, all I can add is that ya just have to find a new twist on a very old theme. Love...and all it's idiosynchrocies is something that everyone can relate to and people have been recording their thoughts about it in song for a million years.

Maybe concentrate on the " hook" in your lyric...something fresh and interesting. Come up with a kick-ass groove in the melody and people will dig it...even if it is an old theme

:D

JMHO

Limoguy
 
These were the ads by google at the top of the page when I was reading this thread.

Find Love
Find your Soul Mate - 8 million Singles, Pictures and Profiles!

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Broken hearted? Rejected? Caring, confidential, real help. Est.1995.

:D :D :D :D

Obviously this is not just a musician's malady. We can write whatever we want but if lovin' till the end of never/ Bouncing off the walls together is what sells records then that is what we will hear on the radio. Robert Palmer writes almost exclusively about love and I think his music is pretty cleverly crafted for the most part. Tom Waits recently released "Alice". Music he and Kathleen Brennan wrote for a play about lewis carrols fascination with a young girl and the resulting childrens classic. "But I must be insane/ To go skating on your name/ and by tracing it twice/ I fell thru the ice/ of Alice" Good stuff but don't listen for it in wal-mart.

I think it is up to us to turn the screw and twist the old favorite with innocence and malice and everything in between. Then, in ten years, on Bobs bbs when someone is lamenting the endless cliches of love we can (without fear of hipocrisy) post an attachment of our "Don't blame me. I didn't vote for him" bumpersticker.

-b
 
How about incestual love?Don't see that aspect of love covered much.
 
It's the quality of the song that counts. There are probably a thousand songs about love fading, but is 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling' just a cliche? Or 'Killing Me Softly' (falling for someone), 'First Time Ever I Saw Your Face' (new love)? They're only boring for people who can't access the relevant emotions.
 
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worn out cliches...

True, there are boatloads of love songs out there, and it's hard to imagine there will ever be major re-developement of the basic templates...I do think it is important to acknowledge and tip one's hat to those songwriters who bring a genuine spark of new life to a genre that will always be a refuge for hacks pandering to dimwits. I also think there are many songwriters, living and dead, working in a variety of genres who focus on all kinds of subject matter, many of which are just as cliched as uninsipred love songs. I understand your point, love songs can be dopey and boring. But I think you should take heart, there have been zillion-selling records about coal-mining disasters, the War of 1812, size-discrimination, cars, beer, lousy weather, cowboy boots, alien abduction, casual sex, cb radios, existential dread, God, Jesus, Buddha, Donald Duck, the Rocky Mountains, the Smoky Mountains, the Alps and Andes (but none to my knowledge about the Himalayas...what's up with that?), cigarettes, shortenin' bread, bunnies, shipwrecks-LOTS of shipwrecks, Margaret Thatcher, Rudolph the Red Nosed-Reindeer, the Red Baron, trains, man-eating rats, transvestism, child abuse, motorcycles, ganja, short-shorts, shaving cream, labor strife, doggies, the Cuyahoga River, Haille Selaisse, firearms, taxes, Heaven, Detroit, New Jersey, the
white cliffs of Dover, West Virginia, Bakersfield, the Yukon....
 
oh yeah and..

the range. don't forget the range :D

This seems to be a topic (chiche that is) that hits a sour chord inside alot of us when we're blamed of it. It's bound to happen though, in my opinion when emotion is involved when writing a song. It's especially hard to avoid if the song is about love and/or heartbreak. Although I'm not sure if I believe love is a cliche, there sure are alot of cliches about love. I guess we should be careful to avoid the obvious ones. Sometimes though, for me, the words just come out and nothing else seems to say what I want any better that that time tested: "insert cliche".
Maybe it's because soooooo many people have felt the exact same way sooooooo many times that, it's getting harder and harder to say it any better. But I for one intend on continuing to try and break the mold, you know, hit the groud runnin', pull myself up by my.... oh you get the picture:D
-okobd
 
good comments all around.

I think that the difference between a "good love song" and a "cheezy love song" is the delivery.

Briggs
 
Right on, the singer HAS to sell the song, i.e. sing it with conviction and purpose even if the lyric is banal. Great vocalists make it look easy, whereas those of us less gifted (like me) tend to do a lot of huffin' & puffin' and generally make listeners wish the sorry warbler would just go ahead and have that myocardial infarction he is so earnestly straining for. In a way that's what makes this fascinating fun, trying to maximize one's limitations in ways that make them seem like assets. We're havin' fun, right?
 
Hell yes we are! Good old fashioned muddled fruit simple syrup dash of bitters Splash of soda pick your whiskey fun. :D
 
Hey...Love is a very popluar subject. Most everyone likes to hear about it and a well written song about it can still stir the emotions of most folks. It's just trying to find that new way of saying the same thing to keep it fresh which is the craft and art of songwriting. It's no accident that it is the most written about emotion. :D

My .02
 
There have been love songs as long as there have been songs. I still think they're completely valid. I always get mad when I hear people like Michael Stipe (who I respect as a lyricist) saying they'll never write a lovesong. Well, all the greats did it from Shakespear to Lennon & McCartney. I think it's a copout to say it's used up. It's no more used up than falling in love.

Of course there are a lot of bad ones out there & lovesongs are the surest way to get into trouble with bad cliches but hey, that's the challenge. If you can't write a good lovesong & you're a songwriter you're in real trouble!

I think the real trick to writing a good lovesong is that you absolutely, positively, without a doubt HAVE TO BE IN LOVE!!! Or at the very least you have to have been in love at some point. And you have to channel that feeling in the most real way you can. Otherwise you're going to sound like some typical smarmy buuulshit that was put together with the "standard issue lovesong ballad template."

As far as cheese it's a very subjective question. Some say it's the cheese that makes it taste good while others assert that it's the cheese that gives you high cholesterol & makes you constipated. There is probably some truth in both perspectives.

So while I firmly believe that it is possible to write a good song about anything, I implore you all to

love on

-small
 
small said:
There have been love songs as long as there have been songs. I still think they're completely valid. I always get mad when I hear people like Michael Stipe (who I respect as a lyricist) saying they'll never write a lovesong. Well, all the greats did it from Shakespear to Lennon & McCartney. I think it's a copout to say it's used up. It's no more used up than falling in love.

Of course there are a lot of bad ones out there & lovesongs are the surest way to get into trouble with bad cliches but hey, that's the challenge. If you can't write a good lovesong & you're a songwriter you're in real trouble!

I think the real trick to writing a good lovesong is that you absolutely, positively, without a doubt HAVE TO BE IN LOVE!!! Or at the very least you have to have been in love at some point. And you have to channel that feeling in the most real way you can. Otherwise you're going to sound like some typical smarmy buuulshit that was put together with the "standard issue lovesong ballad template."

As far as cheese it's a very subjective question. Some say it's the cheese that makes it taste good while others assert that it's the cheese that gives you high cholesterol & makes you constipated. There is probably some truth in both perspectives.

So while I firmly believe that it is possible to write a good song about anything, I implore you all to

love on

-small
Click to expand...

a quote from the devil's advocate...

Kevin Lomax: What about love?
John Milton: Overrated; biochemically no different from eating large quantities of chocolate.

being "in love" is temporary and addictive

and when the love drug runs out, we all break up.

isn't dating cool??? (note the extreme sarcasm)
 
Whoa-new can of worms now. Research has shown that chocolate produces significantly elevated, if fleeting, levels of serotonin in the brain. And what has John Milton done since Paradise Lost? Such a sour-puss.
 
BRIGGS said:
a quote from the devil's advocate...

Kevin Lomax: What about love?
John Milton: Overrated; biochemically no different from eating large quantities of chocolate.

being "in love" is temporary and addictive

and when the love drug runs out, we all break up.

isn't dating cool??? (note the extreme sarcasm)
Click to expand...


Yep, lots of hits out there about chocolate.

I'd say mutual attraction makes the world go around.

Writing love songs is a bore because there aren't many angles, but my favorites has been the inability to consumate a relationship for whatever reason, a thirid party, a tragic accident, etc. There are thousands of angle there.

Then again it's the lyric and it often doesn't matter in contemporary music.
 
Italo Calvinos book T-ZERO splits the biochemical aspects of love from the more human emotional and then fuses them back several times within a couple a hundred pages. Smells like science fiction. Feels like riding in the back seat of a car next to someone you realllly like. What fun to be knowledgable enough to write that song.

-b
 
Face it! Love songs are here to stay! Especially the ones about lost love or unrequited love... why?

Well let's think back to our youth... remember your first girlfriend? Now remember the breakup? What did you listen to after that special moment?

Twisted Sister's "I Wanna Rock"?
Motely Crue's "Wild Side"?
Quiet Riot's "Cum On Feel The Noize"?

or did you go home and crank up J Giles Band's "Love Stinks" (Still a love song in it's own right) hehehe


As for me, after my breakup I listened to Billy Joel's "The Stranger" ....

They exist because we relate to it on an emotional level...

OK I'm done now... It frighten's me when I get this in touch with my "inner female" side.... hehehe

- Tanlith -
 
"You'd think the people would have had enough of silly love songs" (Sir Paul McCartney)
But then again, just look around and listen...they haven't!!!
 
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