And when I say relationships, I mean the typical man/woman kind. No cite here but like 95% of songs I hear on the radio are about guys singing about girls, girls singing about guys, getting the opposite sex, losing them, longing for them, trying to forget them, etc. Can’t humanity think of other things to sing about?
People sing about what moves them. We are moved by each other. Nothing more to it, really.
Relationships are visions, but only illusions…
Okay, it’s a combination of two things IMO. One is the Dead Poets Society theory that language (and by extension, song) was invented to woo women (and by extension, men)
The other is the lowest common denominator. Artists make, and companies sell, songs about relationships because most people have had relationships, and so have a higher chance of relating to any one song about relationships. Any one person, even those with no musical taste, might like a song that’s not about a relationship, but only if they like the subject matter!
ETA but of course those with no taste mainly like songs about relationships because that’s all they’re exposed to because they don’t care enough about music to find anything else and are satisfied with their current selection of music.
That’s indeed it, as simple as that - even though I’d like to add to that that not only the feelings of the singer, but also those of the audience matter. Love and relationship is a topic that’s important to people, particularly young people towards which many of these songs are geared.
Moving to Cafe Society from GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
I asked my mother this very same question, back when I was around 7 or 8. Strange to hear it from an adult.
Let’s not also forget that some songs ostensibly about love and relationships are only using relationships as a metaphor for something else. I’ve been thinking about that as I’ve been relistening to Matthew Sweet’s Kimi Ga Suki Raifu album, which on the surface is composed of 12 songs about love and relationships…but in actuality all 12 are about his relationships with Japanese culture and fans and how they affected his songwriting.
And it’s little secret that a lot of other artists have used “breakup songs” to vent about how they feel about other band members, or their record company…
You try writing a three-minute catchy pop song about the role dialectic materialism has had in shaping human history and get that thing to #1 on the charts. 
Even though I would argue that most songs aren’t about love and relationships… they’re about sex, plain pure and simple. When the woman sings in Lady Antebellum’s duet “Need You Now”…
The impulse driving the song is her looking for happysexyfuntime, not a deep committed relationship resulting in marriage and grandkids.
Hit songs are what they are, but it doesn’t take much digging to find actually interesting song lyrics. One of my favourite bands CMX did a whole CD filled with one extended scifi-story for example. The first song starts with (and this is my poor translation from Finnish into English):
“Sky starts to redden, it knows what to wait
when on the docks glow the prows of ships.
They lie like wounded animals, so tired
so wakes up a city surrounded to its morning day last.
Soon from the night of times march figures of winged bulls
from the night gloom of ancients, twilight of nightmares.
Soon open the skies, rush down hosts of angels
laps filled with lightning, eyes shining of justice.”
Here’s a song from the same CD, if anybody wants to take a look.
This is a pet peeve of mine and has been since the 4th grade. I relish any song that isn’t about men and women and their sexiness and love and pain and (unhealthy, IMO) obsession with each other. Bo-ring.
I’ve been in a relationship for 6 years, I love the man and would be very sad were we to part, but honestly I can think of 100 things other than our love I would write a song about if I ever got the urge. Love and break-ups songs are all about the exact same feelings and situations, so dull. I am interested in the human condition like anybody but I don’t feel that love and sex are so profound that they need to be crooned about constantly.
ETA: It probably doesn’t help that I don’t really relate to most songs about romance and sex, not having much of a ‘need’ for other people and never having gone through a painful breakup, unhealthy relationship, betrayal or obsessive crush…
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 want to fill the world with silly love songs. What’s wrong with that?
Check out some Rush sometime. Very low quantity of love songs. And some damn good music. Not all music has to be about sex, love and relationships.
I agree, the love theme is way overdone. I write lyrics, quite a few of them, but I try to avoid that topic. When I do attempt it (as when we needed some love lyrics for background in a movie script) here’s the sort of thing I end up coming up with:
LOVE DEEP DOWN
COPYRIGHT MR 2010 by Sam A. Robrin or whoever the hell it is who writes these things. Go ahead and use it, but if you make a little money on it, I want some!
-
Every time I hold her hand, I'll be reminded ofThat little gold-and-diamond band–
The symbol of our love.My love for you
Goes deep down, too–
Way deep down, and all the way through.
The path of love may twist and bend,
But things come out right in the end.
I wanted to ask her to marry me,
And planned out a little surprise.
It always warms up my heart to see
That look of delight in her eyes.
It occurred to me that it might be nice
To freeze the ring in a cube of ice.
I asked her to come to my house that night.
Cooked a dinner to please a king.
Served cocktails for two by candlelight,
And gave her the one with the ring.
"For a special lady: a special drink."
And she did--exactly what you think.
My love for you
Goes deep down, too--
Way deep down, and all the way through.
The path of love may twist and bend,
But things come out right in the end.
“I like to eat ice cubes,” she said with a pout,
And the perfect date went ka-boom.
I hadn’t planned upon going out–
Not to the emergency room!
Nurses, X-rays, exams, technicians–
Love thrives under the worst conditions.
The doc called us in and had this to say:
"It's not sharp, like a thumbtack or glass.
With a couple of pills, you should be okay.
Don't worry--this, too, shall pass."
And though I expected to take the blame,
That sweet girl married me just the same.
My love for you
Goes deep down, too--
Way deep down, and all the way through.
The path of love may twist and bend
But things come out right in the end.
You don't need to know exactly how,
But we managed to retrieve it.
That ring is on her finger now,
Never again to leave it.
Every time I hold her hand,
I'll be reminded of
That little gold-and-diamond band--
The symbol of our love.
My love for you
Goes deep down, too--
Way deep down, and all the way through.
The path of love may twist and bend,
But things come out right in the end.
I should really be ashamed of myself. I try to be. But somehow, I just never am…
At work we have the radio on all day and quite honestly I’m bored stupid with love songs.
I think adolescents, being permamently randy, as a result of hormones and frustration, lap them up so that the rest of us are forced to endure them, hour after hour, day after day.
Apart from the boredom factor the words are often very silly, people rushing off to pray because they’ve fallen in love with a pretty face, people who are going to die if their love is unrequited, men bursting into tears etc.
It reminds me of the lines we used to spring on girls when I was a nipper, we’d say anything, no matter how absurd if there was a chance of us getting some sort of sex at the end of it.
And by sex I mean even a grope.
For ogs sake lets have some more original and imaginative themes instead of the multitudes of dross we seem fated to endure for what is probably eternally…
And now I have to get down on my knees to pray, because I’ve burst into tears and think that I’m going to die of a broken brain.
Robin Williams as John Keating in Dead Poets Society:
There’s another factor as well. Consider the career of songwriter/musician Al Stewart. He wrote a song about Murmansk convoys in World War II; he filled his lyrics with references to important and dramatic events in history. He had some successes, but never had smashing top-tier commercial success until he wrote In the Year of the Cat, about a man who spends the night with a free-spirited woman.
People write this stuff because it makes them famous and rich, and the public doesn’t tend to be hungry for songs about Murmansk convoys.
Unless you’re Billy Bragg. (I guess The World Turned Upside Down didn’t quite make #1).
Most of my friends’ favorite music (the stuff considered most cool and cutting edge) has been a relationship-free zone… There’s definitely a huge crowd that thinks love songs are for wimps.
Pink Floyd, Judas Priest, Metallica, even most of early Springsteen, on and on… it’s all about struggle, war, madness and death.
'Cause love’ll get you like a case of anthrax! (Gang of Four)
CMC fnord!
There’s always The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald