Love songs are the spawn of the devil!

I love love song, really crappy Corny ones, "Piano in the Dark" makes me cry. I am really awful, I could hate the band but if they do a good tear jerker I'm hooked, good example is Coldpaly, I hate Coldpaly, CM is just too nice, and he's married to Gwenie (who I am convinced is an alien), but yellow, or Fix you??? I'm a total mess, tears running down my cheeks and loving it! Right now, as I write this I'm watching a crappy music TV channel and yer man who won Pop Idol is singing "leave right now"...Will something? Oh, Will Young! But oh that song is a classic, I love when I hear it on the radio, I sing at the top of my lungs, my voice catching in my throat as I sing along........why?

What is the power of Love? Why do we embrace all literature, music and films inspired by romantic love over the other emotions? Why not pride, or envy or jealousy?

There is a line in High Fidelity that I love " Did I listen to pop music because I was depressed, or was I depressed cos I listened to pop music?" It's that bloody circle, love hurts and popular culture promotes the fact that love hurts, romance is always about the beginnings and ends of relationships, no one is interested in the boring middle bits, when your tummy doesn't turn over every time you see each other, but you love that he knows exactly how you like to be held, or that a cadburys creme egg hidden in your handbag beats all the red roses in the world!

We wonder why we embrace romance, but I suppose the middle bits just don't sell books, films or Cds? I love Brief Encounter, it's one of the most romantic films of all time, it's old, black and white, about an extremely respectable house wife (I think it's the 50's) and she meets another married man, falls in love, totally, the implication is they even "make love', but he is a doctor and when offered a new job moves, so they meet for the last time, their wonderful repressed English sense of responsibility means they decide to stay with their respective partners and their relationship ends, very sadly in a train station Cafe!

S


he goes back to her children and husband, to domestic "bliss". She is barely keeping it together, but you know her and her husband will go the distance, (a 50's bridges of Madison County). It makes me sob...she chooses her family and domestic mundane reality over love and passion, we are so used to films where the heroine leaves her mundane imperfect relationship for some passionate romeo. Who do you think would be happier? I'm thinking the woman who had the affair and went back to her family with the heartbreak would eventually be glad she stayed with Mr wireless listener/pipe smoker, but all those women who leave their boring partners for passion soon would discover that passion does not last, and you wind up in the same routine and rut as before!

OK, so I love he romantic songs, they strike a cord! But i would love to see a counter culture of realistic romance....a song where they talk about how nice it is when he brings her a cup of tea after sex, or how it pisses her off when he leaves his socks on.... No1 here I come!