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Love Songs that Aren't Corny?
- Thread starter 48thStreetCustom
- Start date
That's a pretty good call!I donnoh, man. I've listened to almost every Zappa and the only two love songs I can think of are Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up and his cover of the Turtles' Happy Together... Unless you count Dirty Love and Penguins In Bondage as love songs.
But you missed "The Closer You Are" on Them or Us.
I loved FZ's sense of irony, sarcasm (gotta love that!) and not being afraid to call out things as they really are (or should be!).
In reference to Stu's comment- IIRC, when he was writing his album "The Urge", he knew he was gonna sing, but didn't want to write garbage lyrics like the above quoted comment. I always reference that in a band when thins start getting a little too "syrupy".
I actually bitch-slapped our drummer once for suggesting that our original project write a "love song"!
We didn't have to fire him- he quit shortly afterwards...
I was always under the impression that Frank Zappa's contempt for love songs was based on the love songs of the 1950s, not the 1980s. He was railing against the Tin Pan Alley/"moon-June-spoon" pablum that permeated the airwaves before race music [sic] transformed into rock'n'roll.
I donnoh, man. I've listened to almost every Zappa and the only two love songs I can think of are Lucille Has Messed My Mind Up and his cover of the Turtles' Happy Together... Unless you count Dirty Love and Penguins In Bondage as love songs.
I think of "Oh No" as a love song of sorts: It's a song about love (and about people's attitudes about love). The fact that it's also a character assassination just goes with the territory!
"Oh no I don't believe it
You say that you think you know the meaning of love
You say love is all we need
You say with your love you can change
All of the fools
All of the hate
I think you're probably out to lunch"
I thought he wrote Oh No as a cynical response to All You Need is Love.
His full quote from his autobiography (written in the 80s) is:
I detest love lyrics. I think one of the causes of bad mental health in the United States is that people have been raised on 'love lyrics'.
You're a young kid and you hear all those 'love lyrics', right? Your parents aren't telling you the truth about love, and you can't really learn about it in school. You're getting the bulk of your 'behaviour norms' mapped out for you in the lyrics to some dumb ****ing love song. It's a subconscious training that creates desire for an imaginary situation which will never exist for you. People who buy into that mythology go through life feeling that they got cheated out of something.
What I think is very cynical about some rock and roll songs -- especially today -- is the way they say: "Let's make love." What the **** kind of wussy says **** like that in the real world? You ought to be able to say "Let's go ****", or at least "Let's go fill-in-the-blank" -- but you gotta say "Let's make love" in order to get on the radio. This creates a semantic corruption, by changing the context in which the word 'love' is used in the song.
When they get into drooling about love as a 'romantic concept' -- especially in the lyrics of sensitive singer/songwriter types -- that's another shove in the direction of bad mental health.
Fortunately, lyrics over the last five or six years have gotten to be less and less important, with 'art rock groups' and new wavers specializing in 'nonjudgemental' or 'purposely inconsequential' lyrics. People have stopped listening to the lyrics -- they are now only 'pitched mouth noises'.
You're a young kid and you hear all those 'love lyrics', right? Your parents aren't telling you the truth about love, and you can't really learn about it in school. You're getting the bulk of your 'behaviour norms' mapped out for you in the lyrics to some dumb ****ing love song. It's a subconscious training that creates desire for an imaginary situation which will never exist for you. People who buy into that mythology go through life feeling that they got cheated out of something.
What I think is very cynical about some rock and roll songs -- especially today -- is the way they say: "Let's make love." What the **** kind of wussy says **** like that in the real world? You ought to be able to say "Let's go ****", or at least "Let's go fill-in-the-blank" -- but you gotta say "Let's make love" in order to get on the radio. This creates a semantic corruption, by changing the context in which the word 'love' is used in the song.
When they get into drooling about love as a 'romantic concept' -- especially in the lyrics of sensitive singer/songwriter types -- that's another shove in the direction of bad mental health.
Fortunately, lyrics over the last five or six years have gotten to be less and less important, with 'art rock groups' and new wavers specializing in 'nonjudgemental' or 'purposely inconsequential' lyrics. People have stopped listening to the lyrics -- they are now only 'pitched mouth noises'.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
On a side note, who would win an "ugliest band" competition between The Cars and The Rolling Stones?
The Cars. Many women thought Mick was drop dead sexy back in the day. I've never run into anyone with a crush on Ric Ocasek.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
Drop dead sexy, but drop dead ugly (you can be both). And Benjamin Orr was the eye candy of The Cars. Other than that...
Hmm need to add these guys.
And this is when they were YOUNG! Age kicked them all in the mommy daddy button.
