Getting to Know Us—Love Songs

Collected by Jayne Ormerod

 Let’s all sing together now (cue the bouncing ball over the words…)

“What the world needs now is love sweet love…it’s the only thing that there is just too little of!”

In keeping with the Classic and Cozy them this month, we are forgoing our regular one-on-one interview with one of our bloggers but instead have invited members to share with us their favorite Love Song.  Choices say a lot about a person, IMHO, so let’s get to know us a little better. And by the end of your post you might have a few ideas for a Valentine’s Play List. 

Gina Ardito:

My all-time favorite love song is "At Last" by Etta James. Here's why:

Okay, don't tell my husband, but before I met him, I was dating someone else and that song came on the radio while we were parked outside my parents' house. It was late--definitely after midnight. Well, he turned up the music and told me to get out of the car. Baffled, I stepped out, and he proceeded to slow dance with me on the front lawn. All these decades later, it's still one of the most romantic things I've ever experienced.

Sandra Wilkens:

Pick a love song?  Oh, my.  Music of all genres can capture my heart, but I was able to narrow it down.  I’ve enjoyed John Denver’s music since I was a girl and I would sit in my grandma’s black rocking chair to listen to his record.  “Annie’s Song” was a favorite romantic song for most of my life, but a few years ago I found a little known gem called “For You”.  It’s his pure voice and a piano.  The entire song is lovely, but these lines really resonate with me.  “Just to look in your eyes again…Just to live in your laughter…Just to sing in your heart…Just to be every one of your dreams come true…For you—for the rest of my life…For you—all the best of my life…For you alone, only for you.” 

Janis Susan May Patterson

My favorite love song is "If Tomorrow Never Comes - Will She Know How Much I Loved Her" as done by Garth Brooks. It was the song he was singing (at a concert) when I decided that after 50 years of singledom I wanted to marry the man who became my husband. 

Leigh Verrill-Rhys

My favorite love song is: Stephen Bishop's "Looking for the Right One." I heard this song when my husband and I were on a date when we first met (to be detailed on February 24th). The song is so evocative of romance and the heartache of searching for love. I used a line from the Beatles' "I Will" for my debut romance "Wait a Lonely Lifetime" which is echoed in Bishop's later recorded song. Art Garfunkel also recorded  "Looking for the Right One" but Bishop does it best.

Victoria M. Johnson

I'm a die hard Beatles fan--so picking just one favorite love song is hard.  But since my arm is being twisted here, "If I Fell" gets my vote as the most romantic.  The words are so raw, of someone hurt and vulnerable, someone who truly wants to give love another try.  The lyrics are heart wrenching actually.  I would love to love you...  I'm getting choked up just thinking about it.  


Jayne Ormerod

In high school the song my BFF and I thought was THE most romantic song ever was “Muskrat Love” by Captain and Tenille (now divorced…but I digress…)  When it gets to the part about Muskrat Suzie and Muskrat Sam doing the Jitterbug well we substituted our own names paired with whomever the boy was we liked at the time.  My friend Barb would sing “Muskrat Barbie and Muskrat Steve” every time.  She ended up marrying him too! 

So for those of you who have forgotten the lyrics (or are maybe too young to have ever heard them), don’t expect great romance.  In fact from the distance of time they sound kind of cheesey.  But that’s the way we were back in the late 70’s.

Copyright laws preculde me from publishing the lyrics here, but if you need are very curious about the song, you can hear the song and ready the lyrics here:  http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/captain_and_tennille/muskrat_love.html
But consider yourself warned, it's a tough song to get out of your mind!  

Love Songs

There are some love songs that are so evocative and conger up such images that they are a story onto themselves.  I’m not talking about the tune that was playing the first time I slow danced with my crush in junior high, Elvis Presley’s “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You.” Nor Percy Sledge’s “When A Man Loves a Woman,” when I was in college dancing with a different boy.  Those songs can remind us of the one we danced with and kissed, but the song is only the trigger for the memory. 

What I’m talking about here are the songs that tell a love story that we all relate to.  Think of  Bob Seger’s “We’ve Got Tonight.” This is a song that tells a universal story.  One that even if you never experienced, you can imagine.  You know there’s no future with him, but you’re attracted to each other and “you’ve got tonight,” something could happen.  Maybe you’re on a vacation and meet this guy.  You might have gotten into something except that you don’t live anywhere near each other and you’re too new in the relationship to commit, but you do have tonight, so “why don’t you stay.” There’s a compelling story there that we all relate to.  It’s the reason the song stays in our head long after they’re over. 

Then there is “You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore” sung by Barbra Streisand and Neil Diamond, the story of a love gone cold.  You can imagine the wife waiting for her husband to come home from work as she tries to muster up the courage to talk to him about their relationship.  She’s afraid of his response, the pain she will feel, but she knows she has to confront him no matter the outcome.

I have only skimmed the surface of the love songs that have touched me.  Besides songs by Bob Dylan, Restless Heart, Peabo Bryson and Dan Hill from the past, there is Pink’s “Just Give Me a Reason,” Sam Smith’s “Stay” and John Legend’s “All of Me” to remind us that love songs are still strong and capable of touching us.

Great love songs raise the bar on romance novels.  I want my books to have that same impact.  I want readers to be thinking about my characters, believing in them and imagining their lives together long after they’ve finished the book.  Great romances do that.  It’s the reason that “Pride and Prejudice” is such a universal classic.  It also happens in more contemporary romances.  Think of Marian Keyes’ “Anybody Out There.” I listened to it on a CD in the car.  When I realized what had happened to the hero, I had to turn it off so I could mourn.  In Jane Green’s romance “The Beach House,” another book I listened to in the car, I worried about the characters between car trips until all their problems were resolved.  And then I missed them.  In these romances the authors created such compelling characters that we believe in their stories long after they are over.   

As a romance writer that’s my goal, to make my hero and heroine and their love so compelling that we believe in them and worry and think about them even when the story is done.  I hope that I succeed.

Deborah Nolan is the author of Suddenly Lily and Conflict of Interest published by Montlake Publishing and Second Act for Carrie Armstrong published by Desert Breeze Press which will soon be available in hardcopy through Amazon.