Silly Love Songs

Silly Love Songs
by Paul McCartney

St Valentine's Day

What?

Happy Valentine’s Day, everyone! It’s a great day to tell all your loved ones just how you feel about them. So often, it takes some cataclysmic event for us to remember to hold our loved ones close, to send a note and give a hug to our wife, husband, daughter, son, mom, dad, or friend. But Valentine’s Day is the perfect opportunity.

Today, we celebrate the musical language of love. Now, to my mind, a true love song, by definition, cannot be “silly”, just as there is no bad gift if it truly comes from the heart. I think St Paul agrees with the concept, as he writes about the ultimate gift of love:

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. – I Corinthians 1:18

And in today’s song, Paul McCartney seems to jump right in and sing along with us:

You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs.
But I look around me and I see it isn't so.
Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs.
And what's wrong with that?
I'd like to know,
'cause here I go again

I love you,
I love you,
I love you,
I love you

The key phrase is repeated over and over, as if we’re prone to forget it. Kind of reminds me of God’s patient repetition of His love for us, over and over. We, each one of us, appear to be slow learners.

Mr McCartney was always my favorite Beatle. There’s a phrase that’s started popping up on placards last year in Boston’s Fenway Park – “Manny being Manny” – referring to idiosyncratic left-fielder Manny Ramirez. Each Beatle also had his own quirks, too: mystical George, introspective John, wacky Ringo, and then there was “Paul being Paul” – happy, smiling, almost looking like a bobble-head with his left-handed guitar, a seemingly endless string of melodies tumbling out of his head. He was “the happy Beatle” and moved on to a solo career, then founded Wings, and then went solo again. He also seems to be the longest lived one, giving more weight to Proverbs 17:22, “A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.”

What's wrong with that
I need to know,
'cause here I go again
I love you,
I love you

Love doesn't come in a minute,
sometimes it doesn't come at all
I only know that when I'm in it
It isn't silly, no, it isn't silly, love isn't silly at all.

And then, the “silly” love song gets a little more complex, as Mr McCartney layers in the voices of his wife Linda and other Wings members, into a little contrapuntal episode:

How can I tell you about my loved one?
(I love you)
[I can’t explain the feeling’s plain to me, say can’t you see?]
How can I tell you about my loved one?
(I love you)
[Ah, he gave me more, he gave it all to me, now can’t you see?]

This “silly” love song was used to great effect with numerous other “silly” love songs in the Elephant Love Medley of the 2001 film Moulin Rouge! Young, idealistic writer Christian moves to Paris with his typewriter and immediately falls in with a group of bohemian artists. When Christian first meets them, they are rehearsing a play with an amazing resemblance to a certain musical that begins with a nun singing atop a mountain:

Toulouse-Lautrec [singing]: The hills are made with the euphonious symphonies of descant . . .
Doctor: I don't think a nun would say that about a hill.

The bohemians take Christian to the Moulin Rouge and he is smitten from the first moment he sees, Satine, the star performer. Satine lives in a giant, elephant-shaped structure in the courtyard of the Moulin Rouge (just roll with us on this if you haven’t seen it). Christian pays her a visit. In the new form of a love song he first rapid-fires the titles of songs, then weaves them into something that is not so much a medley but more like a stained glass window where each song is a different shard. See how many you can name:

Christian: Love is a many splendored thing, love lifts us up where we belong, all you need is love.
Satine: Please, don't start that again.
Christian [singing]: All you need is love.
All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Satine: Love is just a game.
Christian: I was made for loving you baby, you were made for loving me.
Just one night, give me just one night.
In the name of love, one night in the name of love.
Satine: You crazy fool, I won't give in to you.
Christian: Don't leave me this way, I can't survive, without your sweet love, oh baby, don't leave me this way.
Satine: You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs.
Christian: I look around me and I see, it isn't so, oh no.
Satine: Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs.
Christian: Well what's wrong with that, I'd like to know? ‘Cause here I go again!
Love lifts us up where we belong, where the eagles fly, on a mountain high.
Satine: Love makes us act like we are fools; throw our lives away for one happy day.
Christian: We could be heroes, just for one day.
Both: Just for one day. We could be heroes, forever and ever. We could be heroes, forever and ever. We could be heroes . . .
Christian: Because I will always love you.
Satine: I
Both: Can't help loving you
Satine: How wonderful life is
Both: Now you’re in the world

I heard it explained once that, in a musical, the characters sing when mere dialogue isn’t adequate, and they dance when mere singing isn’t adequate. In the Elephant Love Medley it’s as if one song isn’t adequate, so they try to fit as many as they can into the scene.

It reminds me of another great love scene: you might open up the Gospel of John and read chapters 13 through 16. Jesus and the disciples have just had the Last Supper and all hell is about to break loose. There’s so little time left and Jesus, in these chapters, lays it all on the line. It’s a wonderful medley of the Law and the Prophets; of old commandments, new ones and summations; of vines and branches; of abiding and remaining and loving. The words tumble and cascade and engulf us.

In Moulin Rouge, Satine also runs out of time, but Christian shares his story with us in an act of "redeeming the time":

Christian [voiceover and typing]: Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months. And then, one not-so-very special day, I went to my typewriter, I sat down, and I wrote our story. A story about a time, a story about a place, a story about the people. But above all things, a story about love. A love that will live forever. The End.

Christian [voiceover, singing]: The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

This Valentine’s Day, hug your loved ones, then open that great big Valentine with your name on it – the Good Book. It, too, above all things is a story about love. A love that will live forever.

And what’s wrong with that?