If music be the food of love... Photograph: Roger Tooth
Brainiac songsmith Stephin Merritt once recorded 69 of them. Public Image Ltd told us they weren't singing one. And poor old Gary Barlow wrote a million of them, and still couldn't find the right words. With Valentine's Day fast approaching, the search for the perfect love song should be on the mind of every budding lothario.
You might think there are an abundance of neat compilations out there for you to stick on the CD player while you propose to/cook for/argue with (delete as appropriate) your loved one. But there isn't. Unless, of course, you count the endless stream of Now That's What I Call Nauseatingly Soppy Music Volume 27s that come out every year, all of which seem to contain Lady In Red, I Will Always Love You and Everything I Do (I Do It For You), and feature a clip art heart on the sleeve.
Clearly, culturally-sophisticated types like us want something a little more unique. And the good news is that this week sees the release of It's a Beautiful Thing: Indie Love Songs. The bad news is that it's even worse than Now That's What I Call Nauseating Soppy Trash Volume 27. Featuring an almost exclusive playlist of Dad-approved, Weatherspoons rock, it's got to be one of the oddest, not to mention least romantic, compilations released in some time.
Ignoring the odd Pulp or La's track, the choices include way-past-their-sell-by-date ditties by New Radicals, Semisonic and - oh the horror - Ocean bloody Colour Scene. If these songs are your idea of the way into your partner's heart then, well, you probably haven't got a partner to share Valentine's Day with. I mean, picture the scene: you're down on one knee on the banks of the Thames, fumbling for the ring, when the string quartet you booked steps out from behind a tree to play... Shed Seven's Chasing Rainbows. Mmmm, maybe we'd better split up after all.
So ignore what seems to be the selection of an asexual Britpop fan from 1996 and consider the following. I would argue that writing the perfect love song is incredibly difficult, yet also incredibly simple. In fact, it needs only two factors.
1) Original lyrics There are infinite ways of saying "I love you", so "I love you" just won't do. The aforementioned Stephin Merritt of Magnetic Fields conveyed love by comparing it to gin, jazz and even by imagining an encounter with arch-linguist Ferdinand De Saussure.
2) Strong melody It doesn't matter how insightful the lyrics or how twisted the time signature - if it doesn't have a tune that melts your heart, you're gonna get dumped come the 15th.
Anything else - be it double meanings (Spiritualized's love/heroin metaphor) or wild instrumentation (anything with Phil Spector's wall of sound) - is merely a bonus. Personally, I'm still waiting for the time when the Beach Boys, Lauryn Hill, Fleetwood Mac, David Kitt, Magnetic Fields, Jay Z, the Blue Nile and the Research all appear on the same Valentine's Day comp. Got any better ideas?
