Say It Simple, Say It Well

I was listening to the radio on the drive home last night. It was the Delilah show, something I used to fall asleep to as a kid. Probably a good thing I wasn't the one driving.

Anyway, I was beginning to zone out to the soothing tones of that radio matron and her sappy love songs....when I zeroed in on the lyrics.

And I had a realization. None of those sappy love songs make any sense.

I mean, really? "You are the sun/you are the rain"....how can you be both?

"She's my kinda rain/like love in a drunken sky" .....what does that even MEAN?

Why can't love be expressed without all those cheesy metaphors that make absolutely no sense? Why can't someone simply say how they feel, without all the flowery words? Does everyone have to turn into Percy Blysse Shelly when they're in love? Really?

I mean, the man was long-winded. Not every girl likes have a five-page-long ballad about how beautiful she is. You like her hair, her skin and her lips. Okay, okay, we get it. You're focusing elsewhere so you don't say anything about her tits. Good boy.

My favorite songs that lean more towards simplicity would have to be Hands Down by Dashboard Confessional and Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol.

Hands Down is talking about sex between a couple for the first time, said simply but beautifully. And at the end, you get the sense that though "love" has been said nowhere in the song, there are strong feelings between the two. "My hopes are so high/that your kiss might kill me/So won't you kill me/so I die happy/My heart is yours to fill or burst/to break or bury/or wear as jewelery/which ever you prefer." These lines are hopeful....Emo but hopeful. The other person effects them greatly....but they know, even though there's no words of feelings between them, that the other person cares too.

This is shown by some of the last lines: "You stood at your door with your hands on my waist/and you kissed me like you meant it/And I knew that you meant it/that you meant it/that you meant it."

It's hopeful. And isn't that what love is? A hope, a sensation. You hope that this feeling will last forever. You hope that the person you love, loves you too.

Snow Patrol's Chasing Cars is close enough to my own state of mind (and heart). It's said simply and beautifully. Why do so many songs lean towards flowery or impossible titles and songs? Why sing in a cheesy way when you can say everything here?


"We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?"


Words that are spoken, every single one, has meaning. Deep meaning. To overuse I love you, to use flowery, overly-exaggerated speech almost makes those words lose such great meaning. It renders them ridiculous and untrue.

Maybe this is just the opinion from the Generation X/Y/whatever generation mine is considered now. Maybe with the onset of instant yet anonymous communication, much expression is lost on us. Maybe, being products of reformed hippies and heartless capitalism, we view love cynically.

But I still believe in it. I hope for it. But even I say again here......I want it put simply and randomly. That way I know it's truly from the heart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVQ4aLWLi8Q

The guy on this video knows it.