Boyertown PA
2-07-2025 10:15pm

THE MEASURES: Silly Love Songs

by Phil Repko

“You never close your eyes, anymore, when I kiss your lips.” Trouble is, neither do I. And as the season of love, flowers, and candy quickly pounces upon us, I think the world has hit a snag. Valentine’s Day had an impressive popularity arc, I believe, but the celebration seems to have gotten a bit tired here in 2025. In younger days and times, we all knew that love grows where your Rosemary goes, even if you’re walking in the rain and the snow, when there’s nowhere to go. Now, it seems sometimes that we’ve simply had enough of silly love songs. Paul McCartney looked around at that fifty years ago, and decided he’d miscalculated.

Not so today.

Now, before you write this rumination off as the grumblings of a disaffected Boomer, (which I am and it is,) I ask that you consider the possibility that the threadbare appearance of Valentine’s day as a national holiday is directly related to popular music.

Half a century ago, some people wanted to fill the world with silly love songs, (at least that was the political party line,) or maybe it just seemed that way. Today, love just doesn’t seem to be “soft as an easy chair,” or “all we need.”

Yes, I have “misty, water-colored memories of the way we were.”

I think the crux of the problem is related to how and where we ‘consume’ our music. In the 20th century, the young and in love gathered at teen dances at schools, churches, or one of twenty different social organizations. From a young age, the generations before and after mine consumed music in public, or on the predictability of a Top 100 radio station.

Absent that, we were consuming the most awesome of love songs in Camaros, Mustangs, GTOs, and Chargers. We bought 8 track tapes, cassettes, CDs, and even made our own mix-tapes. Foreigner wanted to know what love was, and the freedom of great cars and popular music gave us confidence to go look. Yes, some of us were wearing bell bottoms and bracelets made of hemp.

We knew that love hurts, and that it scars. But it was also a flower, and we are its only seeds. It isn’t and wasn’t hard to find tunes that kept the prospect of love and romance in the forefront of our minds.

Unlike modern kids, we had the time of our lives, and we never felt that way before. The sad thing is that the 21st century generation never has and never will. I don’t see most of the teenage to young adult crowd showing any great excitement about Valentine’s Day (and I have worked in schools continuously since 1983). I think a piece of the allure that is missing is related to the power that music once provided on WFIL, WIBG, and later on WYSP and WMMR. We listened and sang together, even if we weren’t in the same place.

Here’s a taste of what I mean. The last half of the 1900s was a procession of smoldering manly men. No bashfulness if Frank thought he’d gone and spoiled it all by saying something stupid like, “I love you.” Elvis similarly had no hesitation in admitting that he couldn’t help falling in love, or in asking his lady to love him tender(ly). The message was clear: real men declare their love for the object of their affection.

The women were on the same page. Whether Tammy was standing by her man, or Carole felt “the earth move under (her) feet,” the radio waves told one and all that “all [we] need is love.” A little earlier, Etta James, exclaimed “At last!” and on her heels, Aretha was ecstatic to tell some guy, “You make me feel like a natural woman!”

And the songs weren’t just saccharine or silly. They included real struggles.

Who could resist Carly Simon’s surrender when she conceded: “So you say it’s time we moved in together, and raise a family of our own you and me?” Yes, I know that tune has more than a bit of skepticism and defeat in it, but “That’s the way we’d always heard it should be” Of course, “we’ll marry?” Yes, the women were romantics as well.

I lament that as much as there is plenty of great music in the 2020s, our kids and grandkids – and the generations that will follow – will never know the joy of being at a junior high dance and letting the raw energy of the music carry them away.

School dances, community cotillions, and Inspiration Point have all become extinct.

Music and romance once held hands like lovesick teenagers. But modern youngsters will never know the sweet anticipation of sliding hands into the back pockets of a partner’s Sergio Valenti jeans. The risk was innocent and terrible: a teacher or chaperone might object. The partner might be shocked.

However, If I have never seen you looking so lovely as you do tonight. If I had never seen you shine so bright, the cause would be a noble one. Similarly, The Eagles told us it was okay to hold her close in our dreams. It was simply okay to risk rejection or reprimand: These many years removed, I think:

So many people have come and gone.

Their faces fade as the years go by.

But still I recall as I wander on.

As clear as the sun in the summer sky.

It’s more than a feeling, for sure.

But is there a way back to the innocent enjoyment of courtship as it used to be?

I know the current youthful population need their own tunes. I also know that access to songs is fragmented, solitary, and isolating in and of itself. Most people are listening with ear buds or head phones that deliberately cancel out everything else. I can’t urge you to “Love the one you’re with,” if there are no eagles flying with any doves.

Perhaps my nostalgia for the music of the 60s, 70s, and even 80s has less to do with the music, and more to do with the attitude and culture of the times? For sure, those three decades were more innocent, and more free-spirited. “When you look into my eyes, and you see the crazy gypsy in my soul,” is quite the invitation and suggestion.

How can we use the tools we have now, to achieve the revelation that “I will never be a stranger, and I’ll never be alone. Wherever we’re together, that’s my home?” Romantic and headstrong love, you see. It answers a lot of questions.

I suspect we have become more jaded, of course. Yet people really are still falling in love. Instead of asking, “What’s Love Got to Do With it,” maybe this year we can work toward engaging in a less controlled environment.

I read a stat that said more than half the people who married last year had met their partner using an online dating service. I am happy for them, but that experience is not the same as hanging in the basement, or the barn, listening to all kinds of common core music, including love songs, love songs, love songs.

I was too young to take to heart the compelling plea to “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me,” when Mel Carter told me to, but “wheels [went] round and round in my mind” in the 80s, when Journey helped me to contemplate, “I’m forever yours, faithfully.” In fact, Journey did such a nice update on the “power of love” thing that even current school age kids know about that smalltown girl living in a lonely world. It’s one of the few reasons I won’t stop believing.

In the last twenty years, John Legend, Bruno Mars, Adele, Alicia Keys, Taylor Swift and plenty of others have penned wonderful love songs. But I could play all of those just mentioned, and a significant portion of the population would not know them.

Meanwhile, “I got sunshine on a cloudy day,” will prompt sing-alongs from people from 20 – 80 years old. “Hey, where did we go, days when the rain came,” will be recognized by almost everyone.

Cast my memory back there, Lord.

Sometimes I’m overcome thinking about it.

Making love in the green grass

Behind the stadium with you.

I know the days of nightclubs and dance halls are over, or at least the venues are far different. But I don’t think it’s crazy to promote more collective experiences of music specifically, and entertainment generally. Valentine’s Day is a great place to start, don’t you think?

It’s a cliché` that youthful romance is more piercing than the love that lasts into middle age and beyond. That’s just fine. Couples in their thirties, forties, and fifties may often shift attention from Valentine gifts and romantic getaways to warm and fulfilling events – like trips and concerts that are bucket-list worthy, for instance.

Maybe Valentine’s Day is the right time for watching a favorite movie, even if it’s not a rom-com.

Nah! None of this is the answer.

Here’s the best advice for maximizing your Valentine’s celebration. Find the record collection in the basement. Wind up the old Victrola, or just dig out the turntable.

In a pinch, you can concede all dignity and use the CD player -- or worse --- your Spotify account. Find the Love Song playlist, or the best albums or records you could ever remember, and fall in love, or out of love, all over again.

Oh, make sure to invite your one true love. Or have a party, including all those people who might someday be your one true love.

You could go with some Adele:

When the evening shadows and the stars appear,

And there is no one to dry your tears,

I could hold you for a million years

To make you feel my love.

Or just give up and surrender to the best love song ever:

Oh, my love. My darling!

I’ve hungered for your touch

A long, lonely time.

And time goes by so slowly,

and time can do so much.

Are you,

Still mine?

After all,

Lonely rivers sigh, ‘wait for me. Wait for me’

I’ll be coming home. Wait for me.

Phil Repko is a career educator in the PA public school system who has been writing for fun and no profit since he was a teenager. Phil lives with his wife Julie in Gilbertsville and is the father of three outstanding children, two of whom are also poets and writers. He vacillates between poetry and prose, as the spirit beckons, and is currently working sporadically on a novella and a memoir.

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