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JJ's Bizarre Blog #23 - Incinerated by the Flames of Love and Passion
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Hello again, everyone! March has begun, spring is in the air, flowers begin to bloom and nature awakens from its winter slumber. Let’s hope we are blessed with great weather and great vibes so that we too can blossom into bigger and better opportunities. Among other things, International Women’s Day is this week, so I feel the atmosphere is right to focus on the softer and gentler things in life. No, for real this time, this isn’t a swerve to talk about death and black metal again, promise. I want to talk about love songs. For you see, despite what you might be lead to believe, I am actually not some heartless edgelord only interested in dark taboo topics. I am quite the romantic and I really enjoy a good love story, it just has to be done well! So, allow me to show you. From my heart to yours. This is music about love and romance, the way I feel it!
Some of you might be thinking “But JJ, why didn’t you release this blog on Valentine’s Day? Seems like a wasted opportunity”. Well, that’s because I believe that holiday is irrelevant in its popular definition. Love is something felt, cherished and shared. It cannot be assigned a date or a monetary value. If you love someone, romantically, platonically or because they’re family, then you should show your love to them every day, not just on some assigned date. That love should also be expressed through affection, care and empathy, not materialistic things. And that’s the thing, right - love is one of the most overdone and cliched topics in all of media, any media. But finding the real gems that are full of genuine passion and emotion can be a challenge, just like finding true love in amongst casual hookups and shallow flirting. Well, that’s what I’m here to do, to show you where the real stuff can be found. Looking for it can be troubling, but when you find it, oh is it worth it!
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I usually like to start these blogs with a history section, but as just discussed, the realm of love songs is such a bottomless pit, that doing so would be futile. But nonetheless, it’s very enjoyable to look back at the distant past and appreciate how, despite the fact that our society has changed drastically, the power of love has remained the same. From all the way back with stories like Romeo and Juliet and many other tales from millennia before that, being that love is something intrinsic to us all, it’s no surprise it kept turning up. And what could be more romantic than to have a symphony written just for you and have it survive for generations to come.
In the realms of pop music, “love” songs are basically the default setting. However, in among all the vapid nothingness with the authenticity of a plastic rose, there are real romantic declarations full of heartfelt passion, a genuine moment when the singer opened their heart up and poured its contents out onto the paper before them. When you hear them, you’ll feel it. The emotion is palpable. So here are some of my favourites from across the decades, in no particular order.
Within the electronic sphere, as much as those guys love machines and technology, it’s the underlying human thoughts and feelings that keep people hooked at the end of the day. Whether it’s fast paced EDM tracks to dance to with a lover, electro-industrial dirty talk to spice things up or melancholic house and trance to embrace to and transcend into the aether, there’s a plethora of choice here that fits any vibe and any setting.
Among all of those, I have to give a special shoutout to British new wave legends Depeche Mode. They infused the spirit of rock music with some of the most beautiful and majestic electronic soundscapes ever heard. They tackle a variety of topics, but their love songs are among the greatest ever made. For someone with the surname Gore, Martin over here is sure able to make these synthesizers play a sweet and heartfelt tune.
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With this, we have a perfect transition into the sphere of rock music. It took a good while for rock to mature and venture into more diverse themes, so for a good while, love songs were the default. Here, you have your pickings from a huge variety of music that tackle romance in any number of ways. If you want something dirty and nasty, more lovemaking than lovehaving, you could delve into a plethora of hard rock classics. While their romantic depth is sometimes dubious, their fun factor is undeniable.
Or if you wanna go really filthy, glam rock and glam metal are here to provide. They’re so bombastic, eccentric and just outright fun that it’s impossible to hate them. It’ll be hard to confess your feelings with these tracks, but they sure will come in handy if your proclamation of love goes well.
But if you want to express yourself deeply and truthfully and pour your heart out there, then soft rock is what you need. Some of the most soulful songs ever made can be found here. Gentle as a true love’s kiss yet full of power and emotion, they are a real love letters in musical form.
I would like to dedicate this love letter of mine to a specific band – Foreigner. A beautiful and otherworldly blend of rock sensibilities and gentle keyboard melodies with miscellaneous instruments like saxophone and flute as wingmen, no band and I mean no band can write love songs like Foreigner can. If anyone has ever managed to actually capture the feeling of being in love in musical form, then it has to be them. Mick Jones is nothing short of a genius.
As rock evolved, its darker juggernaut offspring was born and like a loving parent, rock imparted all the lessons it had learned and all the wisdom about life it had to share. While heavy metal was one of the first to break out of the mold of repetitive love songs, metalheads can be romantic too and some heavier confessions are always welcome. In fact, some of the greatest love songs of all time come from heavy metal and I would like to dedicate the rest of this blog to showcasing that, starting of course with the classics. Just like is usually the case, the granddaddies of heavy metal took what hard rock was doing and cranked up the intensity to 11, whilst adding a layer of undeniable veracity to their confessions.
One of the oldest children of heavy metal is of course power metal (and its derivatives). When those guys aren’t busy fighting dragons, questing through distant lands or conjuring ancient magic, they’re usually busy singing serenades to their beloved, singing their love poetry beneath their high tower in the castle. Besides classic heavy, power metal is also the subgenre that most likes to dabble in power ballads and almost all of these are romantic declarations with varying degrees of sugary sweetness.
Another older offshoot would be gothic metal, the darker and heavier evolution of gothic rock. Romance is in their blood and for a lot of bands, it’s all they sing about. Nothing like a macabre and somber love poem, drenched in black melancholy, romance and eroticism. A lot of the songs are also about failed and unrequited love, the pain of it, the scars, the path of healing a broken heart. For a dark romantic mood, there is no better soundtrack than this.
As the years and decades progressed, metal evolved in any number of ways, particularly with the birth of all of its most extreme subsidiaries, as I’m sure you’ve learned by now from my past blog entries. Look closely enough and you can find a few love songs lurking in there as well. Oops, I talked about death and black metal again, sorry about that, I couldn’t help myself.
In the 90s, nu metal was taking the world by storm, pissing off parents and metal elitists everywhere. But, while they weren’t busy singing about parental issues, politics or partying, even the JNCO jeans, backwards hat, gold chain wearing crowd couldn’t help themselves and wrote a love poem or two. From wild cats like them, these types of songs come out surprisingly wholesome and heartfelt.
In the late 90s and early 2000s, alternative rock was also an absolute powerhouse terrorizing the entire world. Also referred to by the less favourable moniker “butt rock” (from the radio stations who played “nothing but rock”), these songs are cheesy and corny to the umpteenth degree. But, call me Stuart Little, because I will eat all of this right up and nobody can stop me. Love deserves no explanation, you feel what you feel and you don’t need to convince anybody of anything. So enjoy what you enjoy and don’t be shy to say and show how you truly feel.
Both of these subgenres would also spawn the next scourge on the metal world, one that would be the perhaps unfortunate cornerstone of the genre throughout the 2010s – I am of course talking about metalcore. Here, bands chose to do away to some degree with all the deep stuff they learned from both metal and punk, like politics, society and the inner soul and revert to the well known formula of songs about relationships and romance. But, again, I have to be honest, while a lot of these are as deep as a puddle, when metalcore bands make love songs well, they make them REALLY well. The mix of melody and heaviness befits the conflicting emotions that love brings – pleasure and pain, hope and despair, acceptance and rejection. It just comforts the soul in a way that few songs really can.
With that, we arrive at the conclusion of this tale that is oh so right. Good love songs and stories are hard to find just how real love is hard to find, but the struggle is worth it, for the sensation of finally meeting what you’ve always been looking for is an emotion that can be neither described nor replicated. So my parting message to you is this. No matter what happens, you must keep trying. Be not afraid of failure or rejection, be not afraid of being honest with others and especially with yourself. Love is like fire, it can destroy and it can create, you will probably get burned the first time you handle it, but try and try again and you will learn to control it. Then you will be unstoppable. So go out there and say how you feel to the people that need to hear it. I’ve graciously provided you some audio-based confidence boosters to go with it. Godspeed! Love you all and see you again soon!
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