I Love to Love Songs

by Isabella Castelo

If you look through my Spotify playlists or liked songs, you’ll find a bit of a contradiction between the songs you hear and the pieces I’ve been writing you each week. No matter how many times you skip, there’s a high chance you’ll land on a love song. As I write now, I’m listening to a cutesy ballad meant to play behind that couple’s most recent Instagram story together.

You may wonder why someone like me—someone who has no love in their life—would want to constantly remind themselves of what life COULD be like if only they had someone to share it with. I think my own personal lack of love is the reason behind my obsession with love songs. As I walk down the street, skipping around like I just had my first kiss, I might look crazy, but in my mind it all makes sense.

My train of thought either goes one of two ways: I’m saving these songs for the future when I’ll actually have a reason for them, or I’m fantasizing about an alternate future. Both are kind of insane, but both are equally fun. I don’t think it’s fair that just because I happen to not have a real relationship to experience myself, I can’t experience the feeling of love at all. These artists wrote these songs for a reason and I plan to enjoy every last drop, making them about myself in some way or another.

I recently went to a concert for the husband/wife duo, Tennis. These two are so lovey-dovey that there was a brief intermission in the show where the woman, Alaina Moore, answered the audience’s nail-biting questions about how to maintain a healthy long-term relationship, as well as discussing her and her husband’s own love story.

Someone in the audience asked why all their songs were about love, and Moore answered by saying that love is such a strong emotion, once you have it there’s no way you could ever write about anything else. I remember thinking about this a lot after the show ended and I’ve come to a verdict: I agree with the fact that love is such a strong feeling it’s impossible to write about anything else once you HAVE it, but personally, I think it’s so strong it’s impossible to write about anything else, especially when you DON’T have it…this entire blog being evidence of this.

This hypothesis carries over to my attraction to songs about love; although I’m not the one writing them, I use the songs to fill a piece of life that is missing for me right now. Thinking of love songs as something reserved only for people actively IN love would be a poor marketing technique for musicians, seeing as it would probably take away a pretty hefty portion of their listeners (and that’s coming from one of those, said, loveless listeners).

These songs give me an image of what love can be, preventing me from becoming a total love Scrooge filled with hatred towards those who have some love in their lives. They give me something to hold on to for the future and fulfill my desires for an emotion as strong as love.

Love,

Isabella

Photograph: Pinterest

I Love to Love Songs