Unrequited love again
The theme of unrequited love continues to provide a goldmine, and we’re not even close to even scratching the surface! It’s a universal thing, of course; most people have had a bout of unrequited love. If it was infatuation, they got over it fairly soon. If it really was love, they bear the scars forever. Or at least until they find another true love. Surveying the search engine terms that bring visitors here, there are many people looking for music to soundtrack their lovelorn existence (there are also lots of hits for the songs about impossible love, which tells you all you need to know about just how fucked up a thing romance is). Anyway, if he or she doesn’t love you back, remember to love yourself.
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Cat Stevens – Here Comes My Baby (1967).mp3
Well, it does sound like everything is well with the still beardless Cat. He”s taking a walk at midnight, which is nice. But soon we are alerted that all is, in fact, not well, for the mile he walks is not only long (as miles go), but also lonely. And he keeps “seeing this picture of you”. Which is were the songtitle comes in. But, oh no, she”s not alone: “It comes as no surprise to me, [she”s] with another guy”. And things don”t look like she”ll dump the chump any time soon: “Walking with a love, with a love that”s all so fine. Never could be mine, no matter how I try.” So is Cat entirely discouraged and looking to move on? Is he fuck! Like anybody in unrequited love, he hangs on to that thread of hope woven from the strands of a particularly thin cobweb: “I”m still waiting for your heart, because I”m sure that some day it”s gonna start.” Let”s make a bet it won”t, Cat. The loser turns Muslim.
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Warren Zevon – A Certain Girl (1980).mp3
Zevon is having a conversation about his unrequited love “” and not just unrequited love, but the dreaded frienditis “”coyly refusing to reveal the name (aaah!) of the “certain chick I”ve been sweet on since I met her”, which is “a long, long time” ago. He resolves that “someday I”m going to wake up and say: “˜I”ll do anything just to be your slave””. In the interim he”ll do what most guys in unrequited love do: procrastinate, hoping that the girl will suddenly realise that actually she is in love with him. Which she won”t, not because Warren refers to her as a “chick”, but because, as she will point out, it”ll destroy the fucking friendship.
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Earth, Wind & Fire ““ Wait (1979).mp3
Frienditis is indeed a bastard. Here, our singer is suffering his frienditis with a heroic and surprisingly jaunty optimism, as though he is inebriated with the godfather of self-help books, The Power Of Positve Thinking. “To wait, it takes love that”s for real”, and if his love is authentic, he reasons, reciprocity is inevitable. The certainty “” not just mere hope “” that she will eventually fall for him sustains him. All he needs is patience, that great source of succor for the poor devils suffering from frienditis: “It”s crazy if you think we”re just friends. Loving when infatuation ends. The wait for you, baby it now begins.” He seems to pick up mixed signals “” “You sigh, when I come close to your heart” “” which persuade him that she shall come around (“someday you”ll grow”). Of course, these sighs might be prompted by her discomfort at his clumsy moves, perhaps because she knows how he feels, and how she feels, and that there will be one broken heart and the end of a friendship.
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Sam Cooke – Cupid (live, 1963).mp3
Ah, a Cupid who unquestioningly follows orders would be a fine thing. Alas, the best alternative, if one wishes to invoke imaginary entities, is to outline your predicament with a plea for intercession. Sam, heard here in his live performance at the Harlem Square Club, states his case to Cupid with humility and urgency: “Now, I don”t mean to bother you, but I”m in distress. There”s danger of me losin” all of my happiness, for I love a girl who doesn”t know I exist. And this you can fix.” He knows Cupid”s methods “” “draw back your bow and let your arrow go straight to my lover”s heart for me” “” and makes a pretty big pledge should Cupid choose to make “a love storm” for him: “I promise I will love her until eternity”. Ah, go on then Cupid, let”s test the dude”s ambitious promise.
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Pete Yorn – A Girl Like You (2001).mp3
If you can”t get the one you want, aspire for a clone. That”s what Pete Yorn is doing on this rather good bonus track from his musicforthemorningafter album: “Some day I”ll look into her green eyes and know that she”ll come with me ““ a girl like you. Tomorrow I think I”ll tell you something, the thing that I haven”t said ““ to a girl like you.” The poor girl-like-her will, of course, be just a proxy, forever liable to be compared to Unrequited-love Girl, and possibly hear Pete moaning Unrequited-love Girl”s name in the throes of passion. And, unless Pete isn”t just throwing a strop here, he might pass on some perfectly great girls who don”t have green eyes”¦
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Liz Phair – Extraordinary (2003).mp3
An anthem for the outsider girl in love with a guy who she thinks has too high expectations. He might see her as average, but she thinks of herself as extraordinary. And not just ordinarily extraordinary; she”s “your ordinary, average, every day sane psycho supergoddess”. And she”ll go to extraordinary measures to get him (or at least his attention); “I drive naked through the park, and run the stop sign in the dark; stand in the street, yell out my heart”¦To make you love me.” I can”t quite put my finger on it, but there probably is a good reason why the guy isn”t falling for Liz.
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Mama Cass Elliott – I Can Dream, Can”t I? (1969).mp3
The story of Cass” life in the “60s was defined by her unrequited love for Papa Denny Doherty, with whom she started on the road to stardom in the Mugwumps. So when she sang about unrequited love (as she did with Denny on Glad To Be Unhappy) in this beautiful version of the old standard, she did so from her broken heart, the pain of which is palliated by daydreaming. She doesn”t go into the specifics of her reverie, other than “that I”m locked in the bend of your embrace”. She takes a frequent reality check as she justifies why she won”t give up on her dream: “I can see no matter how near you”ll be, you”ll never belong to me. But I can dream, can”t I?”
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Wilco – I’m The Man Who Loves You (2002).mp3
Tweedy goes all poetic on us, blathering on about unsent love letters and dropping metaphors about him apparently being like the sea. Basically your average victim of unrequited love who can”t find the right words to say. And then he nails it when he makes the most basic observation: “But if I could, you know, I would just hold your hand and you”d understand: I”m the man who loves you.” Sometimes that works better than complex literal devices.
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Indigo Girls – Ghost (1992).mp3
The spectre of a person the singer was in love with (unrequited, death; though a line in the first verse suggests that it might have been a failed adolescent relationship) lingers still, and does terrible injury. “And time passed makes it plain, of all my demon spirits I need you the most. I”m in love with your ghost.” She has sexual dreams about the person which just add to the pain: “When I wake, the things I dreamt about you last night make me blush. And you kiss me like a lover, then you sting me like a viper.” The protagonist is trapped by a love that will never find expression: “Unknowing captor, you never know how much you pierce my spirit. But I can”t touch you. Can you hear it? A cry to be free. Oh, I”m forever under lock and key as you pass through me.”
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Merle Haggard – Always Wanting You (1975).mp3
Apparently a song about Dolly Parton. As country singers do, Merle is telling Dolly, and us, exactly how he feels: “Always wanting you but never having you makes it hard to face tomorrow, “cause I know I”ll be wanting you again. Always loving you but never touching you sometimes hurts me almost more than I can stand.” And there he had thought that he had it all together. The song could go into the post on love that can”t be, and maybe that”s where it belongs, since there seemed to have been “a yearning and a feeling across the room that you felt for me”, suggesting that Merle”s feelings were reciprocated, if not actually acted on. Of course, when a relationship isn”t possible, love remains unrequited even when the sentiments are reciprocal. Either way, Merle regrets knowing her: “I”d been better off if I”d turned away and never looked at you the second time.”
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I posted a mix of songs about being in love last year, for Valentine’s Day, with a view to facilitating loads of romantic seductions (or something). That mix got deleted by ZShare. Responding to a request, I have revised the tracklisting, dropping a few songs, adding a few new, changing the track order. The Jonatha Brooke song I owe to 
The Smiths canon is brimming with songs about Morrissey”s unlovability. He doesn”t even get rejected; he just can”t find the right person to reject him (and when a girl comes on to him, as one does in Never Had No One Ever, he can”t even get “sorrow”s native son” to rise to the occasion). How Soon Is Now is the anthem of these songs. Every person afflicted with shyness will probably identify with Morrissey”s sad disco tales: “There”s a club, if you”d like to go. You could meet somebody who really loves you. So you go, and you stand on your own, and you leave on your own, and you go home and you cry and you want to die.” Which more or less mirrors my juvenile experience, minus the crying and suicidal tendencies.
Like Morrissey, Hawley is looking for company in bright, busy places, only to find nothing. “I”m going downtown where there”s music. I”m going where voices fill the air. Maybe there”s someone waitin” for me with a smile and a flower in her hair.” And with such hopes our hero puts on his best shoes and (as Kris Kristofferson would have it) his cleanest dirty shirt and heads to Coles Corner, apparently a popular hang-out in Sheffield. “I”m going downtown where there”s people. My loneliness hangs in the air, with no one there real waitin” for me, no smile, no flower, nowhere.” And so he”ll make his sad way home.
Annika Norlin (for she is Hello Saferide) has nobody in her life, so she is looking to compensate for that with meaningless one-night stands, rationalising it with the statement of the song”s title. No strings attached. “I will be gone when you wake up. No awkward breakfasts, I swear. And don”t you look for me, because I could be anywhere ““ in someone else”s house, in someone else”s arms, with someone else to warm the pain away.” Her promiscuity is a band-aid for the sores of loneliness. She really would like closeness, to open up herself, not just her legs. “If I told you my stories and sang you my songs, would you laugh at me? Would you pity me? What would you say if I asked of you not out of accident, out of loneliness: would you shelter me? Will you shelter me?” And why does she not ask? Low self-esteem seems to be at play: “What can I ask of you? What would you want from me? What would you say if I just fell asleep?” Annika, there”s a club, if you”d like to go”¦
Another song about promiscuity compensating for loneliness. She wakes up with a one-night stand guy and instantly has regrets, thinking: “Whatever happened to a boyfriend, the kind of guy who makes love cause he”s in it”¦ I want a boyfriend. I want all that stupid old shit like letters and sodas.” But it doesn”t seem that a boyfriend is on the cards (maybe Liz should look in the unrequited love section; loads of nice guys there), even when a one-night lover reaches out to her. She doesn”t want his pity. So, she concludes, “I”m gonna spend another year alone. It”s fuck and run, fuck and run.” But there is an alarming clue in the lyrics which might explain her disposition. “It’s fuck and run, fuck and run, even when I was 17. Fuck and run, fuck and run even when I was 12.” Does that suggest that she was abused, leading to these trust issues?
In an alternative riff on Audrey”s Somewhere That”s Green in Little Shop Of Horrors, Jay is describing a scene of domestic bliss (and great sex): “I”m making guacamole, he”s working on the car. When he grills turkey burgers he knows I like them charred. I like to wash the dishes, I like to scrub the floors, don”t mind doing his laundry, what are boyfriends for?” Yes, he wants to be a housewife. “What”s so wrong with that?” But, as it turns out, he”s not one yet. “Can”t wait to till he”s in my life, “cause we haven”t met.” (
At first glance, this song (from Hay”s 2001 album Going Somewhere; one of three versions) might not belong in this series, but I think it has a place, and right here. The singer has a girl, but she”s obviously not what he really wants. He”s holding out for a better life which does not seem to include her. Indeed, even now, she is peripheral. “And you say: “˜Be still my love, open up your heart, let the light shine in.” Don”t you understand I already have a plan, I”m waiting for my real life to begin.” It seems to me that our friend could be in depression, vainly holding out for a better future “” “Let me throw one more dice, I know that I can win” “” and in the process is unable to return the love offered by his current partner. Which is really just as tragic as Morrissey”s shyness, Annika”s and Liz”s promiscuity, and Kevin”s lack of self-confidence.
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