Love songs are strange. They are a testament to a deep emotion that once was and may or may not still be. Emotions are not static. They change. I imagine that’s the reason that a lot of love songs get classified as ‘cheesy’ after a while. When you are high on love you say cheesy things. You say all the clichés from a thousand songs and poems and you think that they mean something when you say them because you actually mean it. They don’t feel like a cliché when you are the one saying them. The song though, remains the same as it was the day it was recorded. Whatever happened to the girl (or guy) and whatever happened to the feelings, the song stays the same.
There’s a song on Dave Mathews’ latest album in which he says, “Someone’s broken heart becomes your favorite song.” It’s true that we don’t always get the whole story when we listen to a song and we don’t always care. We just like the way it sounds. Maybe we like the story that the song evokes in us and that story may be far from the actual one.
They say that true love isn’t so much about feelings as it is about doing. Love is a verb. The kind of love that makes people stay married or makes people give money to poor people is probably a more important kind of love than most of what gets sung about. That’s because that kind of love seems more boring. It’s not as exciting as the emotions of new love.
As a songwriter I’m continuously desperate for something to write about. There’s plenty of stuff out there to write songs about but it’s always obvious when I’m trying too hard to write about something that’s not real to me. So when love comes along it makes for a great muse. Suddenly clichés come rolling out of the abyss and present themselves in ways that seem normal, and even good, even though they are mostly the same things everyone has been saying and writing and singing for hundreds of years.
“Take My Hand” is a love song. I suppose it’s a little cheesy, and more so to me because I know the full story. I’m not going to tell you the whole story because I’m tired of that particular story and the telling of it. I hope that it tells a good story for you.
As a songwriter I hope to write lots of cheesy love songs that are so catchy that people can’t help but buy them. As a person I hope I get to write a love song one day that I won’t look back on and wish that the love was as enduring as the song.
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