Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. What’s wrong with that? Frankly, it’s bullshit. Not to mention dangerous, unrealistic and moronic. Am I being cynical? Maybe a little.
If I hear one more love song on the radio while I’m channel surfing my way to work I might have to U-turn it and slam my car into the station responsible. Thank Christ for Triple J – at least they get political about it. They are about all I can stand while my CD’s are in storage and my iPod is stuffed.
The issue with it is this – I don’t have any friends at the moment who are successfully dating. Instead they are meandering from one bad date to the next completely lost like a tourist on the Tokyo subway. I can count on one hand the friends I have who are happy in relationships, but they don’t really count because they are all straight. I blame the media, and here’s why.
From a young age we are encouraged to buy into the notion that life imitates art. Exhibit A: Cheesy eighties love songs. The decade was full of them, and though I am loathe to admit it publicly because they are bad for you, to this day I love those love songs.
The media can be lethal for couples. They present a horrible two dimensional view of relationships and no matter how clever or logical you may be, you’ll fall for it every time.
According to songs, romantic comedies and star crossed tragedies we stay monogamous with those we share an unspeakable connection with. We yearn for these people, ache for them, and it never crosses our love struck minds that we may feel attracted to other people and that such an attraction is okay.
Unfortunately, this is real life and not a Journey song – we feel attracted to other people even when we’ve met the loves of our lives. When this happens it’s like Hiroshima all over again. An a-bomb hits us and we’re left wondering – am I happy with the person I’m with? We get to thinking we can’t be because if we were, we wouldn’t be checking out the eye candy around us.
Truth of it is that sometimes we only ask ourselves this after wanting our love lives to be more like the movies – such is the power of Hollywood. What they don’t often write into the scripts is that we have yearnings for other things. That doesn’t necessarily mean we should act on them, but they are there. That’s what makes relationships real – committing to someone and declining the temptations. Lesbians are often better at this, and the girls are on to something because there’s nothing sexier than loyalty. Boys – take note.
There’s one more thing that bothers me about love songs. I was misguided into thinking that art imitated life. If that’s the case, then where are the compilation albums from the era of Boy George about people getting screwed over by love? (No pun intended)
The bottom line: Do yourself a favour though – don’t listen to love songs. They really are bullshit.
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What did you think of this article? Columnist Brett Dias welcomes questions and comments as well as jokes and party invitations. Email Brett at brett@www.outinperth.com.
