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Joe Campbell
It’s no use. I can’t keep up with postmodern thought. Try as I may, I’m not able to get my mind around the idea that we make our own truth. The lyrics of too many popular love songs won’t let me. No matter when they’re written, they reveal unchanging truths, the kind we discover, not the kind we make up. You might say that the fundamental things apply as time goes by.
Love, the songs insist, transcends time. Ira Gershwin knew it in 1938, when he said that love is here to stay, “not for a year but ever and a day.” Stevie Wonder understood it in 1976, when he stated that “life has given love a guarantee to last through forever and another day.” Keith Urban saw it in 1999, when he declared, “you’ll be safe here in my arms forever and a day.”
I realize that adding a day to eternity is superfluous. I suspect it’s there for emphasis, instead of an exclamation point. It’s hard to sing an exclamation point. In fact, it’s hard to sing any punctuation. That’s why lyric writers often leave the punctuation out.
Anyhow, if love lasts forever, so must we. Even postmodernists don’t believe in love without life.
Faces are a significant love interest in popular songs. From “Baby Face” to “Angel Face” and lots more in between, lyricists celebrate them in all styles. In doing so, they follow the lead of playwright Christopher Marlowe, who celebrated Helen of Troy as “the face that launched a thousand ships.”
Even more significant are hearts. Metaphorically, the heart is the seat of love in popular songs as in popular parlance. Although written by Douglass Cross in the mid-1950s, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” still resonates with us. This, despite the confusion of its message by the growing popularity of organ transplants.
“My Heart Will Go On” is one of the best-selling songs ever. As most of us recall, it’s the theme song of the 1997 film Titanic. You know, the ship that launched a thousand faces.
Lyricist Will Jennings avoided the ambiguity that overtook Cross. Although the title might suggest a transplant, Jennings says part way through “you’re here in my heart. And my heart will go on and on.” He doesn’t say, “my heart is in you. And I will go on and on.” He does, however, say, “We’ll stay forever this way,” confirming the durability of life and love that lyricists repeatedly celebrate.
Of course, they don’t limit themselves to metaphors. They also sing about the soul, the real seat of love. Why, they’ve devoted an entire genre to it. But long before that, we had “Body and Soul,” a 1930 number that became a jazz standard and “Heart and Soul,” a 1938 offering that went on to succeed “Chopsticks” as a popular piano duet for non-pianists. In the 1988 film Big, Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia play it on a foot-operated keyboard. You might call it sole on soul.
Not only do love songs recognize immortality. They acknowledge uniqueness. Mack Gordon’s “There Will Never be Another You” sums up volumes of metaphysical wisdom. Cynics might cry, “Thank God! One of you is enough.” But lovers cry “hank God! ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ ‘You Are My Lucky Star,’ ‘You’re My Everything.’”
That’s when the beloved realizes “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You,” and, if philosophically inclined, sees that God loved you first, loved you into existence, in fact, unrepeatable and irreplaceable.
Oh, I know that there are postmodern songs about relationships. But it’s hard to imagine a postmodern song about love. It’s even harder to imagine that it would be popular. For more than a century, “I Love You Truly” has been popular at weddings. I wonder how long it would have lasted if composer Carrie Jacobs Bond had called it “I Love You Provisionally.”
“Eternally” is from a film score that won Charlie Chaplin a belated Academy Award in 1972. Granted, the lines “I’ll be loving you eternally/ With a love that’s true, eternally” conflict with Chaplin’s marital record. But I suspect the collaborators who put words to his music weren’t even tempted to entitle the song “Temporarily” and develop lyrics to match. They knew intuitively that it wouldn’t reflect authentic human experience.
That’s why Gershwin, Jennings and Gordon didn’t write, “Love is here for now,” “We’ll stay for a while this way,” and “There will always be another you.” Postmodern lyrics just wouldn’t be believable.