Love Song

I’m not a fan of commercial holidays. In particular, I’m not a fan of the idea of one day a year to mark some emotion or thought I’m supposed to have on schedule. I don’t need a calendar reminder to honor my mother, father, or sweetheart (or to be thankful or charitable).

And I’ve been to the well of romance many times in my time, but (alas) every bucket drawn has evaporated, spilled, or been kicked over. Drought may have dried that well, but I still believe in love.

So for lovers everywhere, a lovely love song…

In fact, this may be the best love song I’ve ever heard! It’s a Peter Gabriel cover of The Book of Love:

The song was written by Stephin Merritt for his group The Magnetic Fields (I’ve never heard of either). I first heard the tune in the Scrubs series finale (and immediately went and bought it from iTunes).

I thought of using it here after hearing it in a South Park episode yesterday. (Just in time for the ironically initialed Valentine’s Day.)

It’s really a beautiful, and rather deep, song about love. The lyrics are worth paying attention to (see below).

As a bonus, here’s another pretty love song I’ve always liked, I’m on Fire by Bruce Springsteen:

I spent years thinking this was the one the Pointer Sisters covered. Turned out they had covered another Springsteen tune, Fire (you can, perhaps, see the source of my confusion):

I’ve always liked their version best, although the Boss does it pretty well, too! 🙂

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Getting back to our headliner, the most excellent Mr. Peter Gabriel, he and I go back to his Genesis days, and I can’t begin to count how many times I’ve played his first solo album (“Car”), and Solsbury Hill is still a favorite tune of mine!

The last time I saw him in concert (the tour for the Up album), they were using a new sound system, and it kept cutting out.

It would go from this full-on rock concert to nearly dead silence (you could hear the drummer acoustically, but everything else was electronic). It was intensely weird!

For quite some time thereafter, every time I listened to his tune  Sledgehammer, some part of my mind kept expecting the music to drop out at certain points. Gabriel tried mightily to get through that one, but all the drop-outs during that tune were what caused them to finally stop the concert for 20 minutes to replace the soundboard.

Now, without further ado, here are the lyrics to The Book of Love:

Stay musical, my friends! You can sing me anything.