Anaesthetic of the bleak

Robyn’s recent defence of the single coincides with a shift in my own musical habits. Over the last few months, I have been stepping out on my usual aesthetic choices somewhat, and experimenting, tentatively, with collecting happy love songs. This has had various effects, including using “ella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh, eh” as a kind of iterative statement (as in, “come over about five, ella ella ella etc.“), and a lot of singing things to, and striking poses with, the dogs (to whom I tend to sing things anyway). Aitch and I warbled quite a few hits of the Killers as we pottered around Amsterdam two months ago, and really, that’s about as cheery as I get (although I still have Robyn’s handy happy discography to which to refer as well).

One thing I have noticed about love songs out of the bleak mode I usually favour, is the number that make some reference in their lyric to friends, family and perhaps just the public at large, wishing to impede the progress of love for the singer and the object of their affection. Perhaps this hails back to pop’s roots in the 1950s, when lyricists aped very young teens’ defence of their right to go steady, but it seems a strange cliché in the present day. Alicia Keys sings, most adamantly, that “no-one can get in the way of what I’m feeling”, to which my reaction is, impressive singing, but who, really is trying to rain on your lovers’ parade?

My problem in life has habitually been the opposite, and not fodder for many songs (except perhaps this one, in which I still detect a certain ironic inflection): as a long-term single, the implied message in so many interactions with friends, acquaintances and even family is to get out, get committed, get mortgaged and get settled. Such threads running through any conversation are a far surer fire way to get in the way of what one is feeling. One of the side effects of being attached, this year, has been the cessation of such ostensibly well-meaning queries after my situation in life. (The replacement is far easier: “How’s Señor Mojito?” “He’s fine.”)

There’s something oddly narcissistic, too, about the various celebrations of love to which I’ve been turning my ear. Too many of them seem to embody what I once heard the bride say in her reception speech at a wedding at which I was playing: “So, ladies, I’m married and you’re not, so nyah nyah nyah.” I hope that whatever happens to me I will never nyah-nyah-nyah anyone, in song or in prose.

Perhaps the most enjoyable of the music I’ve been listening to lately are the old standards sung by the greatest interpreters. Billie Holiday singing “Do nothing till you hear from me” still makes my jaw drop: two entirely contrasting possible outcomes running side by side, every line sung with a nod and a wink to the audience. Ambiguity, double entendre; perhaps it’s better to say that it’s those things I like, rather than moods happy or melancholy, in a song.

Do nothing till you hear from me,
Pay no attention to what’s said.
Why people tear the seams of anyone’s dreams
Is over my head.

Tagged as: love, music