Mind Of Man: Now Playing—Crappy Love Songs
Posted by: John DeVore
Filed in:
guys
11:00AM, Wednesday March 25th 2009
I just can’t emotionally or physically connect with a woman unless there is some kind of terrible music playing.
When it comes to love and romance, timing is everything. There is so little choice when it comes to the fickle demands of your heart. And it’s the same with the music that serves as the soundtrack of your life. The songs you fall in love with pick you, not the other way around. There’s a reason the mythical symbol of love is a creepy flying baby who capriciously shoots arrows at random people, coupling them up. He is a stupid, bitter man-baby eternally blighted with an infants diddle.
Every great, or near great, affair you’ve ever had is accompanied, scored, really, by a piece of music that when you listen to it years later, immediately conjures up smells, whispers, and forgotten rushes of blood to the head.
This isn’t the same for breakup songs, which you must seek out. Hello! “Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)” by Phil Collins? When the wounds of heartbreak must be salved, it’s an easy task to find the tunes that make it all better, if but for a moment.
Be they angry or sympathetic, most country music, or rather, the best country music, is about the one that got away.
Of course, breakup songs, and love songs, have nothing to do with knocking-boots tunes. Sex music is exclusively Al Green, Portishead, Nine Inch Nails, Biggie.
Music and love go together like marshmallow fluff and peanut butter. It’s the truth. Every great, or near great, affair you’ve ever had is accompanied, scored, really, by a piece of music that when you listen to it years later, immediately conjures up smells, whispers, and forgotten rushes of blood to the head.
Except that I always seem to be served the musical equivalent of Hamburger Helper. Maybe I’m extremely vulnerable to suggestion, but if I’m in the advanced stages of hooking up, I’m prone to attaching whatever song is wafting about to my heightened emotional state. I bond to music the way an orphaned duckling bonds to whatever is walking around.
Here’s a brief example. She was my biggest crush in college, and we were hanging out in a rioting bar. It took three beers to work up the courage to put my hand around her waist, and she knew that, which was why she met me halfway as I sheepishly leaned in for a kiss. Her lips tasted like watermelon Jolly Ranchers, and the way her tongue lightly brushed my lower lip turned my nerve endings into blinking Christmas lights. As I pulled her closer to me, I suddenly heard: “She’s got the peaches/I got the cream/Sweet to taste/Saccharine.”
From that perfect moment in a college bar until this day, Def Leppard’s cheesy, perennial strip-club anthem “Pour Some Sugar On Me” reminds me of love. A song about a diabetic having a fever dream in which he falls for a syrup fetishist defines that moment in time for me. Maybe the dive with the sawdust carpet wasn’t the most romantic locale, but that’s where it happened. Curse you, ironic, late-‘90s jukebox.
I swear I have excellent taste in music. My fundamentals are solid: Patsy Cline, Otis Redding, Hendrix, Iggy Pop, Led Zeppellin, New Order. Currently I’m listening to a lot of Mars Volta, Kings of Leon, and The Roots. Don’t judge me for my love songs.
But it gets worse. I dated a woman who I was briefly, intensely infatuated with, and her favorite song, and I am not making this up, was “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba. That’s a song about vomiting in the streets because you are a raging alcoholic.
And then there was the girlfriend who worshiped Belle & Sebastian. Have you ever listened to Belle & Sebastian? They sound like two emo street waifs trapped in a well.
And it’s not just the twee end of the spectrum that plagues me. It’s also Train and Dave Matthews. Have you ever tried to make out to Foo Fighters? Or attempted romantic nostalgia to Daft Punk? It’s a good thing I don’t regularly listen to Coldplay, because they bring back memories of a fling that for the most part took place in stairwells and alleys. Then there was Death Cab for Cutie Girl. I’m amazed my testicles haven’t withered like yesterday’s birthday balloons.
Why can’t John Legend, Prince, or even Radiohead be playing when I’m forging future happy memories of relationships gone down the toilet? Actually, now that I think about it, I blame women and their crappy taste in music. From here on out, I’m going to chose the jams. When the jams chose me, I’m going to recreate the romantic scene and pump out some quality music.
All I need is some cheap beer, sawdust, Marvin Gaye, and that chick from college. I wonder if she’s divorced yet.
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TOO_DOPE
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 11:30 am: [report]
I’m falling in love with you all over again, John DeVore.
Arty
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 11:38 am: [report]
Mr. DeVore,
Would you ever play obviously romantic music while doing a non-romantic activity with a female you’re not interested in?
Humble Bee
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 12:04 pm: [report]
That cracks me up, how do you get from Al green to Nine Inch Nails. “I wanna f*ck you like an animal” to “Let’s stay together”
Maybe you should test their taste in music before you get deeper into a relationship. That can be a real killer, I’m into old school everything, lol. Oldies, old jazz,blues, old Rap, old alternative, and my ex would drive me up the wall playing The Game, Lil’ Wayne, and My chemical Romance.
He thought I liked “rock” music and would always play Fall out boy expecting me to sing along. Finally, he noticed my interest in old alternative rock and started playing Eric Clapton after a fight. How freaking cheesy.
oh and right on, Mars Volta! I used to LOVe love them back in 10th grade, I still enjoy ther music.
retro chic
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 12:44 pm: [report]
John, your visuals about vocals and faraway melodies are, well, uh, foggin’ me up here. At a supermarket once, I happened to open the cap to a shampoo that an extra hot ex used. Then two heady sniffs in, one of our favorite private songs piped in from above. I was filleted.
justme
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 12:53 pm: [report]
I love this! This a.m. I was at the gym and ooooold school Bon Jovi came on. I was instantly transported back to my 3rd grade love affair with Jason D. sigh.
40yrolddad
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 02:36 pm: [report]
you’d think that people would have had enough of crappy love songs but I look around me and I see it isn’t so…
some people want to fill the world with crappy love songs - and what’s wrong with that? I’d like to know, cause here I go - AGAIN!!!
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 04:02 pm: [report]
“put your ass in the air
ooh put, put your ass
put your ass up in the air
put your ass up in the air
ooh wooooohhh”
crazyincarolina
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 04:48 pm: [report]
“I don’t wanna sit across the table from you wishing I could run…I want to love you madly…” - Cake
classic
theoldman
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 05:30 pm: [report]
There is nothing worse than “Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro. Surpy and would make you throw up when you were stone cold sober.
Nothing better than blue eyed soul of the Righteous Brothers and “Unchained Melody” A very bad 50’s B movie but an all time great love song.
CheeeeEEEEse
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 07:15 pm: [report]
@Theoldman: I see your “Unchained Melody” and raise you a “Stand by me”, just call me TheYoungManThanOldManButNotTooOld.
@CrazyinCarolina: “She doesn’t care
Whether or not he’s an island.
She doesn’t care,
Just as long as his ship’s coming in.
She doesn’t care
Whether or not he’s an island.
If they laugh, they make money.
He’s got a gold watch.
She’s got a silk dress
And healthy breasts
That bounce on his Italian leather sofa.”
-Cake
crazychica
wrote on March 25 2009 @ 08:46 pm: [report]
Personally, when I hear “Don’t cry for me, next door neighbor” (Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping) I melt. Doesn’t everyone?
Funny Face
wrote on March 26 2009 @ 06:58 am: [report]
I like your list, but I just wanted you to know that Bill Withers sings “Ain’t no Sunshine.” I would hate to think of you being called out by a potential and ruining the moment.
bella7623
wrote on March 27 2009 @ 01:59 pm: [report]
Thank you, Ms. Funny Face for pointing this out. Bill Withers is THEE underappreciated MAN of sweet melodious lovin’ anthems.
missduplicity
wrote on April 3 2009 @ 10:45 am: [report]
*sigh*
I only wish I could get a romantic song connection to my marriage.
The song that was playing during the “it” moment in my relationship with my husband?
...“The Bitch Song” by Bowling For Soup, a band that I don’t even like in the slightest.
On the plus side, I did lose my virginity to “I’ll Make Love To You” back in high school. That ALMOST made up for the fact that the guy’s ex-girlfriend called mid-romp and he actually stopped to talk to her.