Had to go and say "perfect", did you?
*scoffs*
In my view, there is no perfect love song. It's a moving target, always changing, always different. You are a moving subject, with a moving object of your affections. (Or objects, depending on how slutty you are feeling.)
It's not even experienced the same way at the same time by each party involved. For instance, you might tell a guy he's your Aya - Over Night ("chivalry show me the way to go...") and he might laugh throatily and tell you that's all fine and well and very sweet but you're his A Perfect Circle - Magdalena ("one chance, one kiss, one taste of you, my black Madonna..."). True story.
This is a hard one to answer. I knew my ONE almost perfect love song instantly. Then I knew I was wrong, and I knew why. But I don't want to hop right to sharing my conclusion d'heure. Love itself isn't like that. And this space is my field in which to frolic and do as I please, not some rigid survey form with a 55-character answer box.
So let's take a winding journey. Rather... I'm taking one, whether you come along or not.
This'll be a long one. And not appropriate for relatives, probably, especially those who'd still prefer to see me as a cute, li'l inoffensive baby. :-) You've been warned. As my big sis says, "Anyone who reads my diary gets what they deserve."
(Also, very image and video heavy. If you didn't notice.)
This installment is not about my greatest love song in the world.
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| No. This is just a tribute. |
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First up, my favorite harshly realistic love song:
Tim Minchin - If I Didn't Have You (I'd Have Somebody Else)
Your love is one in a million
You couldn't buy it at any price
But of the 9.999 hundred thousand other loves
Statistically, some of them would be equally nice
Or maybe not as nice but, say, smarter than you
Or dumber but better at sport... or tracing...
I'm just saying
(I really think that I would)
Probably
(Have somebody else)
Yeah...
That's actually tied in this category with Placebo - Every You, Every Me. Though I don't take either one cynically at all. More just... with a knowing, little smile. A spoonful of humility to go with your ecstatic sense of cosmic uniqueness. A little down to temper your up, and keep you grounded. "A little sully in your sweet," as Sugar says.
That Placebo song was my #1 favorite when first dating my partner. Always on repeat. Sucker love forever. I (knowingly) choose.
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| The real question: how does she fare against Voltorb's SonicBoom attack? |
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And then there is the song that first really made me pretty sure I wanted to fuck a boy. In 1995 or so. Not any particular boy, mind you. Just a boy. A really awesome one. Someday. In the not too distant future. Maybe.
Cracker - Low
It's not every song that can make you think, "Why, yes, I DO want to go down like some disgraced cosmonaut." :-D
I tend to like songs with space imagery in general. Stars, moons, nebulae, space ships, infinite horizons--all very sexy. For instance I think Incubus' "Stellar" is mostly a really boring song and it's not in the running for this at all, but the opening line ("meet... me.... in... outer. spaaaaace") always got me. Many, many nights I spent outdoors under the stars listening to that song playing on the local alt. rock station. They overplayed it. Probably part of why I don't care so much for it now.
Sneaker Pimps - 6 Underground and Toadies - Possum Kingdom (dark secret? behind the boathouse??? yessssss) were second and third place for this category. And, no, let's not explore why all three of those songs are sort of about degrading situations and/or possibly murdering people, hmm? At least not right now. "Fast As You Can" by Fiona Apple is also on my love song A-list, if you really want some rich material for troubling analysis.
Runners up:
Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
INXS - Need You Tonight (though the Husky cover kinda knocked it out of the park)
Muse - Supermassive Black Hole (I feel bad even mentioning this 'cause there are so many other, better Muse songs... but none sexier, imo. YET.)
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Moving on...
Next up is my "we're broken up and still in love and I know you'd drop everything and come for me if only I asked but I can't afford to go through that again so I'm gonna cut you off now, bye" song.
Does everybody have one of those? Love is a many-faceted thing, isn't it?
Jimmy Eat World - Your House
And my best vaguely resentful-yet-smoldering wistful-yet-firmly-resigned sexytime breakup song, while we're in the neighborhood:
Joydrop - The Line
More forbearance, less finality:
Chris Cornell - Pillow of Your Bones
The embers of the saint inside of you
Are growing as I'm bathing in your glow
I'm swallowing the poison of your flower
And hanging on the rising of my low
Colorful and falling from your mouth
Like a painted fever in recoil
Like a lie without the pain
On a pillow of your bones
I will lay across the stones
Of your shore until the tide comes crawling back
Throw my pillow on the fire
Make my bed under the eye
Of your moon until the tide comes crawling back
My tragically lost love song:
The Seatbelts & Mai Yamane - The Real Folk Blues
The real folk blues
I only want to know what true sadness is
Sitting in muddy water
Isn't such a bad life
If it ends after the first time
Hopeless hope
And the chance with traps
What is right, or wrong
It's like both sides of a coin
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| Bang... It's all... a dream... |
His breakup songs for me were "Fatal Tragedy" from Dream Theater's Scenes From a Memory and almost the entirety of Stabbing Westward's Darkest Days album.
I know this because we listened to each other's music, even when we could not bear to speak to one another. That's how it was. My step-brother had that album, too--Darkest Days. I practically stole it from him, in those (darkest, ha) days. So many times I filled the tub with warm water and played the album front to back on the stereo in the bathroom, naked and immersed, eyes closed, imagining his head space, exploring what it might feel like to be the man who listened to that album over and over on the other side of the country, missing me. And all other emotion would slip away, the more I understood, until there was only love, joy and sorrow remaining.
This was our song in the beginning. His choice:
It would be nice if we could put away and throw out
everything except what really mattered, but
reality is just cruel.
In such times,
I see you laughing
whenever I close my eyes.
Until the day I reach eternal sleep,
that smiling face will
have to stay with me without fail.
People are all sad, so
they go and forget, but--
For that which I should love,
For that which gives me love, I will do what I can.
Back then, when we met,
it was all awkward.
We went the long way, didn't we?
We got hurt, didn't we?
Until the day I reach eternal sleep,
that smiling face will
have to stay with me without fail.
Back then, when we met,
it was all awkward.
We went the long way, didn't we?
We got there in the end.
'cept we didn't!
But I do think we kept our promise: "I will do what I can." That's enough for me to be at peace with what is. That song is also Kikyo's death theme, in Inuyasha... and that's what she says.
"Kikyo, I... I couldn't save you!"
"You came for me. That's enough."
It's not a bad candidate for a perfect love song, actually... but it can't help being a song of failure to me, or at least an ending of sorts, so it can't be my perfect love song.
That song is called "Dearest". In a peculiar sort of way, I suppose he always will be dearest to me. Not because I love him best (I don't), nor because of his own unique set of gifts and foibles are the set I could most admire of any in the world (bluntly, they are not), but simply because of the precise, haunting quality of the time and space in which all of that occurred. The beauty is in the collision. There is an indelible mark because of it, an invisible silver chain, connecting. Unchosen, but nearly ineluctable.
Eventually you see that you were not made prisoner by the chain, nor broken by the collision, only become that much more powerful than before. If you keep on climbing.
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Husky's album Forever So is about that kind of love. To me, anyhow. Every word is golden. The Josephine winding throughout is not just a person, but an idea, an ideal, a broken dream and a new, more sober hope fashioned from the shards of it.
The Woods
I went walking in the woods today
found a path that led me astray
I couldn't leave it
On the bank of a river beneath the trees
I stripped down naked and fell to my knees
I washed my sins away
Morning came and gave the truth away
I wondered if I'd ever return
But as you say, time will pave the way
I just sit and watch our kingdom burn
I went walking in the woods tonight
trees looked wicked by candlelight
I heard them whispering your name
Far away I saw the city lights
the dreams of mankind burning bright
It was so beautiful
Morning came and took my fear away
I wondered if I'd ever learn
But how will we explain the mistakes we made
when my fear will surely return
I went walking on my own
Bright eyed spirits guided me home
But all is not lost when dreams are broken. Reminds me of this quote by Wendell Berry:
There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.---
When my partner and I were moving in together, we were listening a lot to The Helio Sequence - Keep Your Eyes Ahead.
I won't keep my eyes ahead anymore. I don't need to, for I am no longer fleeing. I do not fear surveying the ashes of any kingdom in the world, nor the signs of life that came to bloom amongst the gray.
At least, not for the moment. Fear returns cyclically, like everything else. Perhaps the next go will not be so poignant.
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Now it is time to see how you died.
Remember that death is not the end, but only a transition...
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Then there are the "love as defense against existential angst" songs. Too many to list.
Second place would probably be The Velvet Teen - Naked Girl ("smile, you will be my shield, you'll be the only thing anyone ever sees... kill, crush me, break my will, cease the endless rats inside the walls that squeak and scratch away, and keep me awake..."). Breaks my heart when the singer refers to his relationship as his "Christ in arms"... for the Christ-in-Arms is a traditional term for an image or statue of the Virgin holding the infant Jesus, but it also conjures up the Pieta, doesn't it?
This isn't a song that I really associate with romantic or sexual love, myself. I was given it by a very dear but completely platonic friend a long time ago, and almost feel as if I'm taking care of it for him, on his behalf. Because I grokked it, right away, and he was happy. Which made me happy. So, his song, my heart, always on my iPod ten years later. Weird, I know.
I think the song can be applied to a lot of crutches, though--the "naked girl" is just a symbol of what you cling to, albeit unhealthily, to get you through... for better or for worse. That's the way I hear it. Sort of like "Bottom of a Bottle" by Smile Empty Soul.
First place is IAMX - I Like Pretending.
Are we machines
Obsolete, alone
With symbiotic self-indulgence?
And if we dig deep
The circuitry burnt out, bends
Into neurotic repetition.
But your silver skin soothes my aching curses
and reminds me
That you're worth it.
The whole world's insanities
The bleeding hearts and tragedies
Won't distract me from the deathwish
Are we pretending?
Are we pretending?
Are we pretending?
I like pretending.
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My old cheatin' song:
Liz Phair - Why Can't I?
There are better cheating songs out there ("Bizarre Love Triangle", for one, if you interpret it that way, and the previously mentioned "6 Underground" probably counts as a cheating song, too, if you listen carefully), but this is the only song about cheating that I ever actually cheated to.
Well, depending on what you consider cheating. Maybe it was just a rather rude and abrupt breakup followed by pure fun, as suggested by the lyrics. And no sex was involved. Is that even considered cheating in these daisy-chaining modern times?
(yeah... it was totally cheating...)
(and it was with the aforementioned, not on, if you were astute enough of a reader to wonder)
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Best love song with slightly mystical leanings:
Wilson Phillips - Eyes Like Twins
Describes an impossibly perfect connection, most likely... but very attractive, nonetheless. Loved this one as a kid... though back then I thought Wilson Phillips was a very high-pitched man, haha. So at age eight, I had a crush on an imaginary person. Maybe that's the only kind of crush there is.
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Love as impetus: Home Video - Penguin
Love as both inspiration and acknowledged lie: Miike Snow - Cult Logic
Love as salvation, love as damnation:
T.A.T.U. - Sacrifice
Love is all of that, and none. It exists and it does not. Pathetic and transcendent. Holy of holies, the most mundane collection of observable phenomena.
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GOD, he will not save you
IS NOT, he will not save you
HERE! he will not save you from this
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I have only grazed the surface.
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