I Like Love Songs

I love music. I love the instrumentation, the melodies and harmonies, but even more so I enjoy the lyrics and personal journey they can take me on. I often find myself gravitating to songs with deep lyrical content that take me on vivid journeys in my imagination. Songs that cause me to reflect on my life, and/or the things happening in it, and make me go on adventures in my daydreams are my favorites- more often than not these are love songs. Not love songs that say I love you a thousand times or love songs purely about aesthetics, rather I prefer the ones that create pictures of lasting love- love that goes through trials with one another and comes out stronger on the other side; love that says I choose you everyday no matter what's going on.

I enjoy these songs because they take me on journeys in my mind and cause me to think through what I would like my future, or current if applicable, relationship to be like. They also give me great word pictures to help me describe how I am feeling or quotes to share with a partner when I need help synthesizing an idea or concept.

Currently, I've enjoyed songs with a more stripped-down instrumentation and lyrics that show rather than tell that they are love songs. One of my favorites has been Dancing in the Minefields by Andrew Peterson. This song describes love as something where you're willing to go through all the hardships just to be with your person. It equates the struggles of life and relationship as dancing in a minefield, where one wrong step is catastrophic, but if you succeed how exhilaratingly beautiful of a journey and story you will have. It won't be easy, but it'll be worth it. A similar song that I've been drawn to is Tuesdays by Jake Scott. It describes the advice that a father provides his daughter's boyfriend when the boyfriend asks for his blessing to propose. The father's advice is simple love isn't just the good days and/or the bad days, more often than not its the days in between where not much happens and it's steady-state "life", what the songwriter calls the "Tuesdays."

The picture of life and love, in these songs, is so raw and real they don't pretend like love, and life with someone, is easy or always rainbows and unicorns. They acknowledge the pain and trials that couples will go through. They describe how life is more than just the bookends of great days and horrible days, when in reality life is more often the times between those bookends. There's comfort in the mundane, in the days of calm and steady-stateness. When things aren't exciting that's a good thing, the thing both were looking for in a partner. But just because there are more times of calm- if not, what can be seen as, boredom if not careful- doesn't mean that you aren't still dancing in a minefield it just means you found the right path through.