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chalepa_ta_kala: Is it love, or a mutual strangulation society? Look! It's why I'm single!
Okay, no, it's not, but it is an interesting piece on the fine line between what's coded as 'romantic' and what's needy and suffocating, and it uses love song cliches as an example, which is the kind of thing that makes me point at the monitor and shout "YES!". I don't want to rid the world of love songs, or anything - I don't even want to rid my iTunes library of love songs - but, well, you don't exactly need to go all the way back to 'Stand By Your Man' to think that as a culture, we are going wrong somewhere with this.
Think about it: do you really want the person who'll tell you that they 'can't live, if living is without you'? They exist. They are out there. They will also screw you over in a lot of different ways, because someone who loves being with you is one thing, but someone who really sees their own psychological survival as dependent on you being with them is quite another. That person is going to suffocate you. Ditto, the person who considers you their 'everything'. Ditto, although arguably to a lesser degree, the person who will love you forever no matter what happens - yes, sweet, but really, the world has enough people in it who refuse to get over their ex because some part of them thinks they'd be breaking a contract.
Which isn't to say that I think the world should contain no songs about obsessive, suffocating, needy love. There are lots of ways to love somebody, and we need songs about all of them. The problem, really, is that we take that one kind of love, write songs about it, and present it as The Kind Of Love You Want. (Yeah, my iTunes library has a fair few songs like that too, including 'Without You'. They're not individually bad, they're just rather disturbing as a monopolising collective.)
So, here are a few of my favourite cliche-avoiding love songs. ( These, the world needs more of. )
chalepa_ta_kala: Is it love, or a mutual strangulation society? Look! It's why I'm single!Okay, no, it's not, but it is an interesting piece on the fine line between what's coded as 'romantic' and what's needy and suffocating, and it uses love song cliches as an example, which is the kind of thing that makes me point at the monitor and shout "YES!". I don't want to rid the world of love songs, or anything - I don't even want to rid my iTunes library of love songs - but, well, you don't exactly need to go all the way back to 'Stand By Your Man' to think that as a culture, we are going wrong somewhere with this.
Think about it: do you really want the person who'll tell you that they 'can't live, if living is without you'? They exist. They are out there. They will also screw you over in a lot of different ways, because someone who loves being with you is one thing, but someone who really sees their own psychological survival as dependent on you being with them is quite another. That person is going to suffocate you. Ditto, the person who considers you their 'everything'. Ditto, although arguably to a lesser degree, the person who will love you forever no matter what happens - yes, sweet, but really, the world has enough people in it who refuse to get over their ex because some part of them thinks they'd be breaking a contract.
Which isn't to say that I think the world should contain no songs about obsessive, suffocating, needy love. There are lots of ways to love somebody, and we need songs about all of them. The problem, really, is that we take that one kind of love, write songs about it, and present it as The Kind Of Love You Want. (Yeah, my iTunes library has a fair few songs like that too, including 'Without You'. They're not individually bad, they're just rather disturbing as a monopolising collective.)
So, here are a few of my favourite cliche-avoiding love songs. ( These, the world needs more of. )
