It takes a while to hear the doubt in some love songs. You learn the chorus first, usually, and the rest trails behind. There might be a whole argument in the verse that you have never properly noticed. Or hardly an argument at all: just somebody insisting that everything is wonderful, a little too often. Once that detail catches your ear, singing along can become a rather different business.
Familiar objects help bring those people into focus. Cards on a table, a controller left on the sofa, an online destination like Betinia NJ: the surroundings change, but we know the language. In songs by Lana Del Rey, Sting and ABBA, that language gets tangled up with love. What interests me is how seldom the music and the person telling the story seem equally sure of themselves.
eLyrics editorial illustration of music and familiar objects sharing a listening space.
Three Voices With Something Left to Say
These aren't songs to turn into a set of instructions for a relationship. The people in them are too particular for that, and at times too hard to read. It is more rewarding to spend a few minutes in their company, taking the voice seriously without assuming it tells us everything.
Lana Del Rey: Is Being There Enough?
“Video Games,” on Born to Die from 2012, makes an ordinary evening feel almost impossibly important. Del Rey doesn't need a dramatic event to fill the recording. There is someone the narrator wants, and the opportunity to spend time with him. We recognise the activity in the title. The amount of feeling gathered around it is another matter.
I wouldn't want to tidy that feeling up. Calling it pure contentment ignores the unease; calling it hopeless devotion seems to deny her any pleasure. There is room between the two. A person can enjoy an evening and want more from it than the other person realises. You can hear the song that way without claiming to know anything about the singer's private relationships.
Sting: A Person You Cannot Quite Reach
The man in “Shape of My Heart” has a different preoccupation. He is occupied with cards, looking for patterns rather than making himself easy to understand. Sting and Dominic Miller co-wrote the song, which appears on 1993's Ten Summoner's Tales. Miller's guitar introduction gives us time to settle into the scene before the voice arrives. Then the heart, so clear as a card suit, becomes difficult to pin down as a feeling. The explanation circles around him. That repeating guitar figure seems a good companion for somebody who can be visible and still keep a great deal to himself.
eLyrics editorial illustration of an intimate rehearsal; the fictional performers do not represent the artists discussed.
ABBA: The Question Under the Confidence
“The Name of the Game” was a single in 1977. ABBA's own account gives it a setting worth knowing: a girl falling in love with her psychologist. That makes the wish to be understood rather more complicated than the title alone would suggest. It also makes me wary of treating the song as an uncomplicated picture of a new romance.
The record is beautifully assured, from its opening bass and synthesizer riff to the way Agnetha Fältskog and Anni-Frid Lyngstad bring their voices together. Yet the character still has to ask what the other person's attention means. She hasn't got the certainty that the arrangement seems to promise. That is the catch in the chorus, even when you are singing it with complete confidence yourself.
The Chorus Is Only Part of the Story
It is tempting to make a favourite line explain the whole recording. Our article on how lyrics change what we hear is a good reason to resist that temptation. A verse can make a much-loved chorus sound suddenly exposed. Nothing on the record has changed. You have simply heard what led up to it.
Read Around the Words You Remember
The Library of Congress's music and language activities compare lyrics, music and tone. For a less formal evening at home, try the same comparison with one song you already know. Our guide to reading lyrics more carefully also points towards the words surrounding a familiar hook.
- Read the verse before going back to the chorus.
- Notice who speaks and who never gets to answer.
- Let the last repetition change your mind about the first.
I'd leave room for disagreement after that. Some songs become less interesting when every uncertainty has been explained away. A hesitant person inside a confident recording can tell us more about love than a lyric that has all the answers ready.
