GutterPutter

Love is one of the biggest themes in music for its relatability, but its use in practice oversimplifies and reinforces obsession and codependency.

Over the course of the past century, romantic love stands out as one of the most popular themes within popular music. Pop artists oftentimes have lyrics that allude to their relationships like Taylor Swift, R&B singers such as Luther Vandross tackles sex to accentuate the love they have for their partner, and even instrumental tracks can be composed to capture a feeling of falling in love with someone for the first time such as Broken Social Scene’s closing track ‘Pitter Patter Goes My Heart’ in You Forgot It in People. Styles such as power ballads oftentimes tackle the theme in a way that maximises the emotional sentiment felt and thus tends to play a role in it becoming a major commercial hit. You can thank Bonnie Tyler’s ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ or the likes of Aerosmith with ‘I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing’ for showing off how punchy the song can get if you sing along with it.

Yet, I can’t help myself but feel as though there’s something off about love songs in general. The more I tend to listen to them, especially as I was growing up, the more I feel taken aback by some of the ways it sought to express affection. This isn’t going to be a thorough kind of essay like the one I did for Cyberpunk 2077 or with AI; it’s relatively brief for a start. I do say that many of them tend to represent love in a way that not only comes off as obsessive, but even codependent or essentialist to those whose experiences might not conform to general societal views on relationships.

I would like to start the examination of unhealthy or toxic love in music off at least by slandering by one of the bands I despise the most – Air Supply. Founded in 1975, it is the brainchild of two singers Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock that sold more than a hundred million records around the world. Many of them like ‘Lost in Love’, ‘Here I Am’, and ‘Every Woman in the World’ are among one of the frequent top hits the band made that handle love as its key theme. Barring the cookie-cutter structure that guarantees the songs blending with one another, paying attention to the lyrics and critically thinking about them can leave you with many questions surrounding the dynamics of the relationship.

‘Here I Am’, for a start, involves the narrating voice being incapable of outgrowing their romance with someone else. Lines like “Only you can fill that space for me” or a corny couplet in “I’ve done everything I can to ease the pain / But only you can stop the rain” shows the melodramatic extent of yearning they have for their love interest. This however comes off as being possessive because of the constant insinuation that the narrator’s incapable of feeling happy unless they are reunited with their love interest. What is largely a hapless song about love on the surface comes off as being controlling or even objectifying in the need of the addressee to fulfil the emotional wants.

Other songs like ‘Two Less Lonely People in the World’ or ‘Making Love Out of Nothing at All’ sought to capture this exaggeration of love in an unironic fashion that only further deepens the impression of obsession in practice. The former normalised the need to be in a relationship from its very first verse with the couplet in “My heart always seemed to drift from day to day / Looking for the love that never came my way.” The latter, on the other hand, tried to make its theme come off as authentic by conveying how the attraction is so strong that the addressee could well be “making love out of nothing at all.” The anaphora of “I know” and “I can” placed massive pressure on the addressee to embrace the love the narrator has for them. And the pre-chorus reminds us of being unable to let go of said love without acknowledging what might happen if that went away. 

The obsessive insistence of love is a glaring issue in Air Supply’s shallow appeal, but they are far from being the only ones whose representation of romantic love comes off as being too reliant. Different acts like Phil Collins outside of ‘In the Air Tonight’ or Heart also present it in a way that necessitates sticking together no matter the circumstances that could challenge how healthy it might look. ‘Against All Odds (Take a Look at Me Now)’ absolves the narrator of all blame in not being together with their love interest and had instead blamed them for the misery they are in. ‘Alone’ placed major pressure on being fine with loneliness through its story of how a person could at first feel fine being alone until they fall in love with someone in the process. The need to be in love is insistent and as vague or applicable as they are, the subtext denies exploring romantic love in a way that doesn’t punch down on deviating from the feeling.

At worst, you can have ‘You’re Beautiful’ by James Blunt, a British singer-songwriter whose song topped the United Kingdom’s, the United States’, and Canada’s charts upon its release. Tackling the theme of unrequited love, the voice alludes to the possibility of committing suicide on the realisation that they will never be with their crush as she had a partner. Soapy with an admittedly strong bit of vocal performance on Blunt’s end, among the melodramas that could be found include “My life is brilliant / My love is pure” (although the error in the beginning is a nice touch) AND “I don’t think that I’ll see her again / But we shared a moment that will last ‘til the end”. The funny thing about the song at least is that the track’s inspired by Blunt’s ex-girlfriend thanks to a Twitter post, but the sentiment proves itself to be too clingy at best and outright harrowing in its implication at worst. The music video even saw Blunt jump off into the ocean in reference to the end of the first verse!

In thinking about the kind of love songs that I think are worth a shoutout in highlighting a healthier relationship, one of the very best examples would be Talking Head’s ‘This Must be the Place (Naive Melody)’. Released in 1983, the songwriting behind the track is fascinating to the point where it sticks out as being not only genuine, but even healthy in the ways that it focuses on the relationship. The main lyricist and singer, David Byrne, is known for his neurodivergence as he’s diagnosed with autism and while he wrote the song for his girlfriend and later wife Adelle Lutz (divorced in 2004), the way it was written leaves room for the relationship to come off as both natural and free.

Lyrics such as “Born with a weak heart / I guess I must be having fun” contrasts with “Home / Is where I want to be / But I guess I’m already there” by comparing the existential dread of being alive with the comfort of being with a love interest even if it’s seemingly temporal. Slight alterations to certain sayings like ‘I love the passing of time / Never for money, always for love” did not ignore the impending sense of mortality but instead tried to find a silver lining in enjoying it with a love interest. And the outro in “And you’ll love me ‘til my heart stops / Love me ‘til I’m dead” even has a small bit of subversive charm from the old phrase “together unto death” by acknowledging that the love might not literally last for an eternity. Rather, the love that’s shared while alive is genuine and it can remain a major part of a person’s life even if their partner passes away. Songs like ‘This Must Be a Place’ are treasures that are open in acknowledging that love can be fluid and ever-so-changing beyond even the strongest of relationships.