Dear Sappho,
I recently amused myself by compiling a play list of all the love songs I have ever had with all of my serious lovers. I then asked my girlfriend, not for the first time, what her song with her ex was. She told me again, she couldn’t remember or doesn’t know. I was flabbergasted, how could she not know “their” song after more than 10 years of living together. Either she’s very discrete, diplomatic or completely unsentimental. I have even had songs for women I have just had a crush on. What criteria do you use for picking a love song and how come everyone doesn’t have one?
Dear Everyone Doesn’t Have One,
ReplyDeleteMusic means something different to everyone. Some people eat, breath and live music. Music is always playing in their home, or wherever they happen to be. I think the number one criteria for a picking a love song is that each partner know and agree about the song. Usually agreed upon by singing it out loud to each other, making love when you first heard the song, or some kind of a discussion where you look fondly into each other’s eyes and agree, yep that’s our song. Of course a couple is not limited to just one song. It wouldn’t be a very satisfying play list if it were true. The band would have to pack up after the first song.
There are those songs that remind us of our lover, but that is not necessarily your love song. There are sad songs we play over and over again after break ups that make us feel so good about feeling bad that they often become the signature song for a relationship. But your special song really is a theme song about the relationship and captures certain memories, feelings, or details about when or how you first fell in love.
Not all lesbian couples have lesbian singers or lesbian intent behind the choice of their song. It’s a kind of synchronicity and symbolism that sometimes makes the song select us. The top 20 love songs played at weddings shows us the classics persist; Let’s stay Together by Al Green, At Last by Etta James, Hopelessly Devoted by Olivia Newton John, We Belong by Pat Benatar and Nothing Compares 2 U by Sinead O’Connor.
There are also the songs that make you fall in love with love, or songs that got you through journeys and passages as your victory or endurance mantras. Sometimes best friends give us a song, We Are Family by Sister Sledge, You’ve Got a Friend by Carole King, or Bridge Over Troubled Water by Simon and Garfunkel. It’s the background music and sound track of our lives.
The first lesbian wedding I went to joyously celebrated with Love is All Around by The Troggs. Since it was handed to me on a cassette by my ex I Will Always Love You by Whitney Huston is one of my faves. Sometimes when I hear those old love songs I shared with my dear ex lovers I suddenly feel like I’m young again. Sometimes the song retains a whiff of her perfume, a look on her face or how I felt when our love was new. Hope, inspiration and passion get all commingled together in our hearts and emotions.
I’m not going to list my personal love songs it’s too personal and revealing. But I will admit that Emmie by Laura Nyro is there along with My Girl by The Temptations and Sweetest Taboo by Sade and many others. What I am suggesting is that all lovers get their own love song the good old-fashioned way by falling in love with a woman who puts a song in your heart and then you tell her the song by singing or playing it for her in a way that makes her exclaim, “They’re playing our song,” to which you say “You make my heart sing.”
Love,
Sappho