"Where is the love?" The Age, 11.2.07
Feb 11, 2007 17:40:36 GMT 10
Post by dededom on Feb 11, 2007 17:40:36 GMT 10
*just running out the door and wanted to post this before I forgot*
Where is the love?
Guy Blackman
February 11, 2007
The Age Newspaper
The scenario seems timeless -Valentine's day is fast approaching and a love-struck teenager wants desperately to express the emotions welling up inside for that special someone. Words alone can only say so much, and flowers wilt and die, so, of course, the answer is to say it with music.
But hold on - it's 2007, and musical romance is a tricky business in the 21st century. What song could this young romantic possibly put on an iPod, send as a ringtone or illegally download that says it all in three minutes?
Taking a cursory glance at the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Top 50, it seems love and romance aren't exactly leaping out of stereo speakers. The current number-one single is heavy-metal ballad Lips of an Angel, by new US band Hinder.
Singer Austin Winkler rasps his way through a song filled with yearning emotion, but the song is actually about infidelity, with a chorus that goes "girl, you make it hard to be faithful, with the lips of an angel," and so the effect is hardly Hallmark card material.
Then there's the latest single by pop-emo pin-up boys Panic at the Disco, which has the severely unromantic title of Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off. Lead singer Brendon Urie offsets his pallid beauty (the kind that, like that of My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way, sends teenage girls to emo heaven in 2007) with vicious, jilted lines such as "I've got more wit, a better kiss, a hotter touch, a better f---, than any boy you'll ever meet."
So the chorus of "testosterone boys and harlequin girls, will you dance to this beat and hold a lover close" seems more like cynical rhetoric than a heartfelt question.
Going by its title alone, Akon and Eminem's top-five hit Smack That is even less likely to yield heart-warming results. Akon, who spent three years in prison for grand theft auto, views love in this song with ex-con paranoia, as something that sneaks up behind you and has to be beaten into submission. "I feel you creepin', I see you from my shadow," he sings. "Smack that, all over the floor ...".
Beyonce has had huge romantic hits in recent years with the likes of Crazy in Love and Baby Boy, but, although her current chart topper Irreplaceable sounds as if it should be a love song, in fact, it's about letting her beau know he is far from irreplaceable.
Then there is the slew of tough, anti-romance songs by female artists: P!nk's U + Ur Hand, Maneater by Nelly Furtado, I Don't Need a Man by the girl thingycat Dolls and Jo Jo's Too Little Too Late.
It seems the only artists who appear in the charts in Australia at the moment with bona fide love songs are local Idol contestants, which makes their success seem as much to do with multimedia saturation as a public thirst for love and romance.
But, then again, Idol contestants such as Guy Sebastian, Anthony Callea and Damien Leith must provide something that the Australian public craves, because these big emotional balladeers win year after year
At least Justin Timberlake's slinky hit My Love is categorically and undeniably a romantic love song, a profession of undying R&B devotion to girlfriend Cameron Diaz, filled with lines such as "this ring here represents my heart, but there is just one thing I need from you - saying I do". But, even so, anyone choosing this song to play to their sweetheart on Valentine's Day would be sending a very mixed message, as the couple split just after My Love was released.
Perhaps, though, we're looking for love in all the wrong places. Nick Cave's work was no short cut to romance when he was smeared in blood and baying like a hound as the lead singer of the Birthday Party, but he is now such a fan of the love song that he presented a lecture on the genre for the Vienna Poetry Festival in 1999. Cave believes that these days the singles chart just does not want to know what love is.
"Within the world of modern pop music, a world that deals ostensibly with the love song, but in actuality does little more that hurl dollops of warm, custard-coloured baby-vomit down the air waves, true sorrow is not welcome," he said in Vienna.
According to Cave, for love songs to transcend the typical "moon in june" platitudes, they must contain as much pain and heartache as they do pleasure. He cites Kylie Minogue's Better the Devil You Know as an example of love's true torment hidden under three minutes of synthetic pop sugar coating.
"The idea presented within this song, dark and sinister and sad - that all love relationships are by nature abusive and that this abuse, be it physical or psychological, is welcomed and encouraged - shows how even the most innocuous of love songs has the potential to hide terrible human truths."
It's for this reason that the tragic tales of teenage devotion from various '60s girl groups have stood the test of time. The Carole King-penned He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss) was a controversial single for the Crystals in 1962, while just about every song by the Shangri-Las begins with a teen tryst and ends in death or despair.
Delta Goodrem's incredible Out of the Blue is one of the few love songs of recent years to contain a similar melodramatic flair. The song documents her doomed affair with Mark Philippoussis, which began at Goodrem's hospital bedside during her struggle with cancer, and so ends up conflating love with the spectre of sickness and death.
But out-and-out power ballads such as Out of the Blue are now few and far between. Perhaps the only chest-beating, lip-trembling love song currently in the charts is Evermore's number-one smash Light Surrounding You. It's sincere, open-hearted and romantic, but also purposely vague and universal, enabling the song to mean many things to many people. Of any single currently in the Australian charts, Light Surrounding You will bind the most young hearts together this Valentine's Day.
But Augie March's One Crowded Hour, which just topped the Triple J Hottest 100 poll, may well be more indicative of current attitudes to romance.
"If love is a bolt from the blue, then what is that bolt but a glorified screw", wonders singer Glenn Richards in this rambling, wordy opus, but the chorus seems at least partly hopeful - "for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room".
Richards, however, denies that One Crowded Hour is a real love song, and the fact that the title comes from a biography of late Australian cameraman Neil Davis makes the romance seem even more elusive.
This, then, is just the way love songs are in 2007 - fractured, half-hearted and contradictory. The music industry machinery laid bare in reality TV shows such as Idol have made sincerity in pop unbelievable.
James Blunt croons You're Beautiful after a life of violence as a captain in the British army, while heartfelt, personal love ballads by Jessica Simpson contain seven names in their songwriting credits.
Perhaps the most refreshing and direct attitude, then, is expressed in British grime artist Lady Sovereign's latest single Love Me or Hate Me - "If you love me, thank you, if you hate me .......you!".
Where is the love?
Guy Blackman
February 11, 2007
The Age Newspaper
The scenario seems timeless -Valentine's day is fast approaching and a love-struck teenager wants desperately to express the emotions welling up inside for that special someone. Words alone can only say so much, and flowers wilt and die, so, of course, the answer is to say it with music.
But hold on - it's 2007, and musical romance is a tricky business in the 21st century. What song could this young romantic possibly put on an iPod, send as a ringtone or illegally download that says it all in three minutes?
Taking a cursory glance at the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Top 50, it seems love and romance aren't exactly leaping out of stereo speakers. The current number-one single is heavy-metal ballad Lips of an Angel, by new US band Hinder.
Singer Austin Winkler rasps his way through a song filled with yearning emotion, but the song is actually about infidelity, with a chorus that goes "girl, you make it hard to be faithful, with the lips of an angel," and so the effect is hardly Hallmark card material.
Then there's the latest single by pop-emo pin-up boys Panic at the Disco, which has the severely unromantic title of Lying Is the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off. Lead singer Brendon Urie offsets his pallid beauty (the kind that, like that of My Chemical Romance's Gerard Way, sends teenage girls to emo heaven in 2007) with vicious, jilted lines such as "I've got more wit, a better kiss, a hotter touch, a better f---, than any boy you'll ever meet."
So the chorus of "testosterone boys and harlequin girls, will you dance to this beat and hold a lover close" seems more like cynical rhetoric than a heartfelt question.
Going by its title alone, Akon and Eminem's top-five hit Smack That is even less likely to yield heart-warming results. Akon, who spent three years in prison for grand theft auto, views love in this song with ex-con paranoia, as something that sneaks up behind you and has to be beaten into submission. "I feel you creepin', I see you from my shadow," he sings. "Smack that, all over the floor ...".
Beyonce has had huge romantic hits in recent years with the likes of Crazy in Love and Baby Boy, but, although her current chart topper Irreplaceable sounds as if it should be a love song, in fact, it's about letting her beau know he is far from irreplaceable.
Then there is the slew of tough, anti-romance songs by female artists: P!nk's U + Ur Hand, Maneater by Nelly Furtado, I Don't Need a Man by the girl thingycat Dolls and Jo Jo's Too Little Too Late.
It seems the only artists who appear in the charts in Australia at the moment with bona fide love songs are local Idol contestants, which makes their success seem as much to do with multimedia saturation as a public thirst for love and romance.
But, then again, Idol contestants such as Guy Sebastian, Anthony Callea and Damien Leith must provide something that the Australian public craves, because these big emotional balladeers win year after year
At least Justin Timberlake's slinky hit My Love is categorically and undeniably a romantic love song, a profession of undying R&B devotion to girlfriend Cameron Diaz, filled with lines such as "this ring here represents my heart, but there is just one thing I need from you - saying I do". But, even so, anyone choosing this song to play to their sweetheart on Valentine's Day would be sending a very mixed message, as the couple split just after My Love was released.
Perhaps, though, we're looking for love in all the wrong places. Nick Cave's work was no short cut to romance when he was smeared in blood and baying like a hound as the lead singer of the Birthday Party, but he is now such a fan of the love song that he presented a lecture on the genre for the Vienna Poetry Festival in 1999. Cave believes that these days the singles chart just does not want to know what love is.
"Within the world of modern pop music, a world that deals ostensibly with the love song, but in actuality does little more that hurl dollops of warm, custard-coloured baby-vomit down the air waves, true sorrow is not welcome," he said in Vienna.
According to Cave, for love songs to transcend the typical "moon in june" platitudes, they must contain as much pain and heartache as they do pleasure. He cites Kylie Minogue's Better the Devil You Know as an example of love's true torment hidden under three minutes of synthetic pop sugar coating.
"The idea presented within this song, dark and sinister and sad - that all love relationships are by nature abusive and that this abuse, be it physical or psychological, is welcomed and encouraged - shows how even the most innocuous of love songs has the potential to hide terrible human truths."
It's for this reason that the tragic tales of teenage devotion from various '60s girl groups have stood the test of time. The Carole King-penned He Hit Me (and It Felt Like a Kiss) was a controversial single for the Crystals in 1962, while just about every song by the Shangri-Las begins with a teen tryst and ends in death or despair.
Delta Goodrem's incredible Out of the Blue is one of the few love songs of recent years to contain a similar melodramatic flair. The song documents her doomed affair with Mark Philippoussis, which began at Goodrem's hospital bedside during her struggle with cancer, and so ends up conflating love with the spectre of sickness and death.
But out-and-out power ballads such as Out of the Blue are now few and far between. Perhaps the only chest-beating, lip-trembling love song currently in the charts is Evermore's number-one smash Light Surrounding You. It's sincere, open-hearted and romantic, but also purposely vague and universal, enabling the song to mean many things to many people. Of any single currently in the Australian charts, Light Surrounding You will bind the most young hearts together this Valentine's Day.
But Augie March's One Crowded Hour, which just topped the Triple J Hottest 100 poll, may well be more indicative of current attitudes to romance.
"If love is a bolt from the blue, then what is that bolt but a glorified screw", wonders singer Glenn Richards in this rambling, wordy opus, but the chorus seems at least partly hopeful - "for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room".
Richards, however, denies that One Crowded Hour is a real love song, and the fact that the title comes from a biography of late Australian cameraman Neil Davis makes the romance seem even more elusive.
This, then, is just the way love songs are in 2007 - fractured, half-hearted and contradictory. The music industry machinery laid bare in reality TV shows such as Idol have made sincerity in pop unbelievable.
James Blunt croons You're Beautiful after a life of violence as a captain in the British army, while heartfelt, personal love ballads by Jessica Simpson contain seven names in their songwriting credits.
Perhaps the most refreshing and direct attitude, then, is expressed in British grime artist Lady Sovereign's latest single Love Me or Hate Me - "If you love me, thank you, if you hate me .......you!".