Think of the heady, summery metaphors sung by The Temptations before the simplicity of ‘My Girl’s chorus or ‘Wonderful World’ by Sam Cooke, that list of all the things the narrator doesn’t know, before the final, declarative hook that brings us right back down to earth. Even in the love songs that are more joyous, this pattern repeats. It’s there in ‘God Only Knows’ by The Beach Boys, it’s there in ‘Time After Time’ by Cyndi Lauper, it’s there in ‘Maps’ by Yeah Yeah Yeahs – something intangible giving way to something immediate and vulnerable. Bob Dylan’s ‘I Want You’ contains verses of dense poetry, broken up by the chorus line of “I want you, I want you, I want you so bad,” Nick Cave’s ‘Into My Arms’ spends its verses interrogating the most spiritual aspects of life itself, before a similarly simple repeated refrain of “into my arms, oh lord, into my arms, oh lord.” Simple statements, no ten dollar words, but in the song’s bridge we have an attempt to describe the more abstract, elemental nature of love: Like a river flows, surely out to sea, darling so it goes, some things, you know, are meant to be… And it’s not just this song that pulls off this trick. There is an pained acceptance that this thing is happening to them, and they’re powerless to stop it, and the clarity of the line is replicated in the verses leading up to it too.
Its chorus line is a big, declarative statement that articulates just how deep the narrator of the song has fallen: “I can’t help falling in love with you.” Elvis Presley’s ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’, written by the songwriting trio of Hugo Peretti, Luigi Creatore and George David Weiss, is the perfect love song for this reason. The feeling of knowing exactly and surely what’s happening to you, whilst at the same time not having any words to accurately describe it. This paradox is what defines a good love song. In these cases, love is more the abstract noun, unquantifiable and untouchable, but something you know when you feel it, when you’re in it. They’re about living in the feeling of loving someone, and trying to understand the chaos your brain has been suddenly plunged into. The best love songs aren’t about doing anything. Love songs, though, are a different matter. One of those statements that crystallises something you implicitly understand in a way that you’ve never heard before. “Love, love, is a verb, love is a doing word,” goes the opening line to Massive Attack’s ‘Teardrop’, and in terms of intros that hook you into what a song is trying to do, it’s right up there. Songwriter and journalist Harry Harris explains the secrets behind the best lovesongs ever written.
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