What’s wrong with that? I’d like to know.
To address the OP, I’d agree with your two premises.
Also, it’s because Romance is low-hanging-fruit for a song writer (and, i’m sure, authors in-general). It allows so many possibilities in subject matter, vocabulary, character, etc. It’s a vast ocean of experiences from which to pull and mix and match rhymes and sentences and stories.
Mayhaps I’m “too school for cool”, but I lament the fact that actual, useful knowledge is so unhip in today’s society that it is antithetical to what is considered “popular” in modern song.
When was the last time you learned something useful from a song, such that you were better for having listened to it?
As I recall, Istanbul was formerly called Constantinople. But that’s about the extent.
You left out a word: new. I don’t know any older people who are less into music than they were as kids. But they don’t necessarily keep up with the newer stuff.
There are some examples of other things to write about that are emotionally powerful. Mike and the Mechanics had a No 1 hitwith The Living Years, about the writer’s unresolved conflict with his recently deceased father. Hits a chord because all sons and fathers have difficult issues to work through. Nothing to do with romantic love at all.
And then there’s the Boom Town Rats’ “I don’t like Mondays”.
It can be done without romantic love, and be very mainstream popular.
Or about tinned produce.
Or physical abnormalities.
Or a whole thread about songs about weird subjects.
Definitely, but yet most songs are about love. I do think that listeners want more than that, which is why a well crafted pop song about something else can often capture the public’s imagination.
Or, ya know, you could write about how you can take stuff from work
There are others - think Schoolhouse Rock and the related songs. I still remember the Preamble to the Constitution, almost 50 years later, from that jingle:
(Sing it with me, folks!)
We the People, in order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility,
provide for a common defense, promote the general welfare, and
secure the blessings of liberty to our selves and our posterity
do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
It’s still one of the most pleasant earworms from my youth. Here’s the video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=pf6NvlXEyzg
There’s also the song about the Fifty Nifty United States - decades later, I still have all 50 states memorized in alphabetical order.
But, getting back to the OP, there are few things that we care more about than love - the highs of a new love, especially of first love, and the lows and agonizing heartache of lost love or a breakup.
'Cuz here I go. Again.
Ha!
Interesting fact: Cubans make fun of Mexicans for only singing songs about love, while Mexicans make fun of Cubans for singing songs about anything at all, however mundane.
'cuz here I go again!
::ahem::
Back to the OP: I think some of the universal themes are God/Faith, Love, Tribe/People/Country, War/Victory, etc. No surprise that over the centuries, a majority of music has been written to support/celebrate/discuss them.
Most of those things have their specific places and times - church; ceremonies to celebrate our group, etc. Love is perfect for the everyday, non-ritual stuff.
Much popular music is pulled from the other music groups and adapted for Popular consumption by changing the lyrics to Love, Romance and Sex, e.g., Soul = Gospel with the God lyrics replaced with Love/Sex lyrics.
Finally, Love songs are easy to hide things in. The Beatles Got to Get You Into My Life is famously about pot but sounds like a love song. Same with The La’s There She Goes - which sounds lovey until you hear it is about heroin pumping through his veins, not love.
So, in short - why not? It is the universal theme that can handle a lot of complex ideas and isn’t addressed via other cultural channels.
Hey, it’s a recurring theme in music!
Is that only true of today’s society and modern popular music? Was there “actual, useful knowledge” in yesterday’s pop music (aside from Schoolhouse Rock)?
Pop music typically aims to create an emotional experience for the listener, not an intellectual one.
And I suspect that if pop musicians make their songs too “smart,” they run the risk that the emotional experience some of their listeners have is confusion or feeling dumb—or at least, that’s what the musicians are afraid of.
But since you mentioned a song recorded by They Might Be Giants, I’ll point out that their songs contain more esoteric knowledge that most. (See, for example, “James K. Polk,” “Meet James Ensor,” “Mammal,” or any of their children’s albums.)
Well, look at it this way; Taylor Swift is famous for writing song after song about love and ex-boyfriends. Why does she do that?
Well, it works, but perhaps more pertinently, what the hell else does she have to say? Taylor Swift is 26 years old, and finished high school at home so she could be a musician. She’s never held any other job or done anything else. She has basically no life experience except being a musician and having boyfriends. A song called “I Spent The Afternoon Doing Post-Production On Untitled Track 4 For My Next Album” doesn’t sound super exciting, so back to the boyfriend well we go.
Music is largely aimed at youth. Youth are largely interested in love. Love and sex are hard, emotional things to kids, and music about it speaks to them. Of course, the other popular topic is being pissed off at authority; hence, protest and party songs.
It’s not like all songs are like this, and it’s trivially easy to name famous songs that are NOT about love. Name any really famous artist and you can name a song they did that wasn’t about love or sex. Still, the kids wanna hear about love and sex, so they’re going to get a stream of it.
There are, of course, many artists who are known for writing about diverse, thoughtful, even intellectual topics – artists like Rush, Al Stewart, Warren Zevon, Bruce Cockburn, and Natalie Merchant are among those who come to my mind, along with most “progressive rock” acts. OTOH, while many of those acts have had successful careers, they don’t often crack the pop charts with their songs, and I suspect that many of their fans tend to be older than fans of pop acts.
A parallel to B, B parallel to C…
Not new, rather a long-standing staple of high school shows since Les Luthiers first recorded it. But I sure wouldn’t have minded if someone had made a similar song for Bolzano’s Theorem (my nemesis in Differential Calculus I).
A long time ago, a bunch of Hispanics from different countries were wondering about “homesick songs”. In Spanish you find them in any gender, but not so in English. At first we couldn’t come up with any, then we realized we just weren’t looking in the right direction: the same Celts who are kings of homesickess songs in Spanish will do them in English all right. Lots of them from Ireland, Scotland or in country music (which the Irish and Scottish influenced heavily).
Ha, that’s where I expected Scabpicker’s link was taking us!
I think we’re missing something here. Songs about love are relatable to a wide audience. When you’re trying to sell a product, in most cases, you want a wide audience to ensure the most potential profits. And so we get a lot of love songs, and not as much of songs about other topics.
Personally I’m okay with that, as long as the love songs are catchy and not-vulgar. Taylor Swift gets a lot of heat (get off my girl’s back, Tay-Tay is a treasure ;-)) but other artists put out love songs too. Even male-fronted bands.
I was at Burger King just yesterday and they seemed to have a Whiny 90s playlist going on their radio, including Tonic, Blind Melon, The Verve Pipe, Oasis… And even if most of these are not pop bands (I’m on the fence with Oasis), a good amount of their material is about love, not being able to get it, not being able to keep it, etc.
It may be universal. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s going to appeal to everyone, and, no doubt, some people are going to want more from their music. But I’m not sure we need to trash what’s popular just because it’s popular.
I’ll only trash it to the extent that it’s lazy. I remember Toni Braxton giving an interview where she was talking about how lyrically diverse her album was because it “addressed the many aspects of love”. My head still hurts from hitting it on the wall. That’s not a diverse album! There are so many other topics that cater to a large audience. Maybe a song about patriotism, that always sells. Or about raising kids, or marriage, at least that’s one of the “many aspects of love” that isn’t often written about. you could write about tragedy. You could write about how you hate your job. You could write about friendship. You could write about racism.
I’m not even a country fan, but I’ve always felt those artists strike the best balance. You get your love songs for about half the album but the other half is about other things in life that matter. If you listen to pop music, you’d think life is about moving from one hookup to the next and calling it romance.
A few recent songs that aren’t about romantic love:
Mike Posner - I Took a Pill in Ibiza - about the singer’s life after his biggest hit, and how fame affected him. Notice the homage to Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”
Avicii - The Nights - a guy remembering his father’s advice to live life to the fullest.
Twenty-One Pilots - Stressed Out - some guy complaining about how things were so much better when he was a kid. I actually like the line about people saying “Wake up, you need to make money!” because I relate to it so much.
Shakira - Try Everything - off the Zootopia soundtrack. It’s the song that plays as Judy Hopps first rides the train into the city.