VEGANGELICA

I've been listening to more songs in this thread, thinking about what "love" really means and whether I agree with the views of the songs. For example, Roy Orbison's song above sounds lovely and very emotional...and yet I feel something important is missing from it.

I remember the songs I posted before as my favorite love songs: "Annie's Song" by John Denver, and "In my life," by The Beatles.

What I find frustrating about these and many other love songs, though, is that they miss some of the complexity of what I feel love is. For example, love songs usually involve the singers going on euphorically about how wonderful they feel and how much they want or need someone, so that seems very self-centered, really. Is that love? "Annie's Song" is beautiful, but wanting someone to fill you with sensations isn't a full description of what I feel love is.

Other songs do comparisons of how important people are in your life, such as in The Beatles' song, "In My Life." And I feel that is partly true: certainly you can have stronger feelings about one person than another.

Yet maybe fulfilling promises when your emotions aren't loving, and acknowledging that sometimes you can't easily rank a person's importance in your life are a better measure of love than any of these gushy, romantic feelings described in this thread's songs, most of which seem painfully simplistic to me. Maybe actions are the best descriptor of love than any emotion a person can profess.

The closest representation of love, with its complexities and ambivalences, that I can think of right now is Wilco's "Reservations" song. It shows love isn't all easy and joyful; sometimes it is brutal honesty and confusion and clarity combined. So, I guess right now I'd say this is one of my favorite love songs:

Wilco - "Reservations"

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