Love Songs for Everyone

Love is always an easy topic to write about. As Mia said in her blog, love (unrequited or not), is one of the "baduy forces" that drive people to write (to sing...to cry...to do any crazy stunt possible). If you listen to the radio, chances are that most of the top ten hits are love songs. Why? Because for every hopeless romantic song writer in the world, there are about 10,000 other people who can relate to their songs.

I'm sure that every person, at one time, has experienced the "Killing Me Softly" syndrome. That feeling of unexpected hopelessness when you hear a random song over the radio, and you say, "Ouch. I've felt that...I'm feeling that." Sometimes, some people experience the "You're So Vain" syndrome, wherein you proclaim (out of bitterness, usually), "Hah. Yan siguro kanta nya for me...." Well and good if the song that's playing is "I Wish You Were Here." Too bad for pathetic you if it's "I Never Really Loved You Anyway."

I have always been a hopeless romantic. Even I will own up to compiling songs that seem so real at that time, but are so baduy when I listen to them, say, now? (Note to Leni: I am currently listening to my Break-Up CD compilation. It reeks of Vonda Shepard, Boyz II Men and - gasp - Fralippolippi! Let me ask you..."What was I thinking?") But maybe that's the trick...maybe considering love songs as baduy means that you've moved on because you can't relate to them anymore. :)

I came across this article in Young Star, and every word I read gave a small little tug somewhere inside (my stomach? Oh wait...my heart? Harhar!). I'm sure that most of you can relate to some of the words here, too (sige na, wag na mag-deny...). Enjoy.

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Love Songs For Us Rejects

by Regina Belmonte

Coldplay said it well in just two lines. “So I look in your direction / But you pay me no attention, do you?” They said it even better in another three. “I’ll always be waiting for you / So you know how much I need you / But you never even see me, do you?” I never mistook Shiver for a happy, upbeat song, as deceptive as it may have been. No, Shiver was always on of my many songs of unrequited love, of infatuation and the imminent rejection, and of the desolation in the aftermath.

I find a strange kind of joy in songs about desperate crushes and failed romances. They remind me that I'm not alone in this singular solitude, in this lack of so-called significant other. It's no longer of major consequence to me, but at some point in my juvenile past, I supposed I was hooked by stories of fairytale romances and reams come true. [...]

…For your perusal, a list of some of my favorite songs to listen to when I’m feeling unfortunately single, unfortunately unloved and unwanted, and / or unfortunately invisible – in no particular order.

1) Moving – Kjwan
Why am I always the one moving on?
Slow and bittersweet, plaintive and pleading, that one line speaks volumes. Why am I always left distraught? Why are you so unaffected?

2) Burnout – Sugarfree
O kay tagal kitang minahal. Tinatawag kita. Sinusuyo kita. Di mo man marinig, di mo man madama. O kay tagal din kitang mamahalin.
Love songs always seemed so much more eloquent in Filipino; so pure and sincere. Unrequited love at its finest.

3) Una – Sponge Cola
Maiiwasan ba ang bawat sandaling ika’y laman ng isip ko? Nararapat bang pigilan ang damdamin na lalong mahulog sa iyo? Sa pagkaakit at ‘di paglapit, nananalangin at umaasa.
The desperation in this song has made it one of my favorites from this new band. Thinking about the oblivious object of your obsession seems almost unavoidable sometimes. I know, deep down, that these fantasies will never come true, but I can’t stop myself from thinking them up, either, and in the end, I’m the one who ends up hurt.

4) Hara Kiri – Plane Divides the Sky
It’s time for things to go, but I’m feeling, but I’m bleeding. You will never come, but I’m waiting here. It’s time for you to go, but I’m needing, so I’m fighting. It’s now, I have to live, but I’m dying here.
More desperation. This song is a bit louder than the others that will be found on the list but is nevertheless, equally passionate.

5) Tea and Sympathy – Jars of Clay
It’s not the way that it has to be. Don’t trade our love for tea and sympathy. We can work it out.
And even more desperation. Pleading seems to be the trend with sons like these, but Tea and Sympathy has always been particularly beautiful to me; a song about one’s need to find closure, and another’s apathy.

6) Haligh, Haligh, A Lie – Haligh, Bright Eyes
But now we speak with ruined tongues and the words we say aren’t meant for anyone, it’s just a mumbled sentence to a passing acquaintance but there was once you. You said you hate my suffering and you understood and you’d take care of me. You’d always be there, well, where are you now?
The song is bitter to its very core; from the tone in which it is sung to the very words it uses. (How many songs incorporate a sarcastic “Ha ha ha,” anyway to full effect?)

7) Himala – Rivermaya
Himala. Kasalanan bang humingi ako sa langit ng isang himala?
We who want cannot help making futile wishes, and the melancholy of this song mirrors that longing exactly. Is it wrong to want? Is it wrong to dream? Even when it hurts?

8) That I Would Be Good – Alanis Morissette
That I would be good, even if I lost sanity. That I would be good, whether with or without you.
This entire song should be listened to over and over and over again, if only because its lyrics are exactly how anyone feels. Who doesn’t want to be loved, despite his or her flaws? I can only be certain that love is real when it accepts me for everything that I am, the good and the bad.

9) Forget Her – Jeff Buckley
Tell yourself over and over you won’t ever need her again. But don’t fool yourself; she was heartache from the moment that you met her. My heart is frozen still as I try to find the will to forget her, somehow.

10) 3 Libras – A Perfect Circle
Because I threw you the obvious. You don’t see me. You don’t see me at all.

As I listen to some of these songs, I can’t help wondering why love is such a common topic in music. I can’t understand how a concept so abstract and difficult to grasp; indeed, nearly impossible to define, could have inspired countless arias of complete, absolute emotional abandon. I supposed I’ll find out someday.

For now, I have my youth and my own life to live. Love can (and will) come at the right time. Until it decides to rear its ugly head, however, I shall sit in front of my computer and enjoy all the beautiful music spawned by the sheer honesty of raw emotion and the poignancy of heartbreak. Sometimes, I’ll catch myself smirking sardonically about how silly love can be. And other times, I’ll feel my chest burn. “I’ve felt that,” I’ll say, experiencing an oddly nice kind of depression. “I know how you feel,” says the music in reply. “You feel alive.”

- Taken from Young Star, The Philippine Star. Friday, November 19, 2004.