Popular Culture (Music) 20120406: Love Songs

Love songs are a huge part of popular music, and have been since liturgical music lost its primary place.  I certainly shall not try to cover centuries worth of love songs, but rather just give a few that I particularly like.

We shall cover the mid 1950s to the fairly recent era.  Since I have not kept up with popular music for some years, I leave it to readers to contribute more recent contributions.

One of the classic love songs is Elvis Presley’s “Love Me Tender”.  The music to this song was written by George Poulton in 1861 and the lyrics by Ken Darby.  Presley has partial credit for writing the words, but he hardly ever wrote anything at all, his credit being due to contractual agreements.

However, here is a Presley one that I like better, in the rockabilly tradition.  “Paralyzed” was written by Otis Blackwell.

Love him or dislike him, he had a fabulous voice in his early days.

The Beatles performed a lot of love songs, but “If I Fell” is a very nice early one.  It was written by Lennon and McCartney.

Love songs are not always happy.  “The Long and Winding Road” is extremely sad, but love often hurts.  This is another Lennon and McCartney effort.

The Beach Boys also had their share of love songs.  “Don’t Worry Baby” is outstanding.  Roger Christian wrote the lyrics and Brian Wilson the music.

“Wouldn’t it be Nice”, music by Wilson and lyrics by Wilson and Tony Asher, is another wonderful example.

The Moody Blues were also good at love songs.  “Never Comes the Day”, by Justin Hayward is excellent.  It is about a relationship n turmoil, but it looks like resolution is possible.  Here is a very nice live version.

“For my Lady” by Ray Thomas, is also outstanding.

The only song that I liked by Olivia Newton-John is a love song.  Written by Jeff Barry and Peter Allen, I find it charming.

I shall wrap up for the evening with songs by The Who.  They performed some songs with a depth of feeling difficult to match, but of course you know that I am extremely biased.  Unless stated otherwise, all are written by Townshend.  We shall begin with “Sunrise”, a song about unrequited love.  Interestingly, Townshend wrote it to show him mum that he could write serious music.

Here is Townshend’s demo of it:

Now I am getting teary!

“Love, Reign O’er Me”  is not directed at an individual, but rather the curative power of love as an abstraction.

“You Better, You Bet” is quite the opposite, looking at love in the concrete rather than the abstract viewpoint.  That is one of the best songs by the band post Moon.

I shall stop here.  This is not intended to be a comprehensive treatment of love songs, but rather just some of the ones that I particularly like.  Please feel free to add any that you think have merit in the comments.

My wrist continues to improve very slowly.  I was actually able to use a pencil yesterday, but that was a torturous experience not from pain but from the extreme effort and concentration that was required to write (well, print) just a few lines.  However, that is light years from this time last week.

Warmest regards,

Doc, aka Dr. David W. Smith

Crossposted at

Daily Kos,

Docudharma, and

firefly-dreaming