Singing about a love you’ve never met
Let’s take a break from all the heavy politics, and talk about music.
Have you ever noticed that certain songs dealing with the very same themes are very different? Love of course is one of the main topics of songs – you might say it’s the most common subject treated. Why is it that music – particularly pop music, but certainly opera as well – and love align? Or is it heartbreak that aligns, or yearning? Fulfilled happy love can be the subject of a song, but the number of songs about happy love probably pales in comparison to the number of sad ones.
One song theme I’ve noticed before is that of a person who is imagining a love somewhere in the world, someone he or she has never met but wants to meet – sometimes desperately wants to meet, depending on the singer’s degree of loneliness. So I hereby offer four variations.
The first is “Goodnight My Someone” from “The Music Man.” This is from the original cast album, which is the version I saw in person on Broadway as a kid and loved (I identified with the bookish librarian, and I was drawn strongly to Robert Preston’s brash energy – what charm he had!). I was only a little girl, but this song meant something to me. And I was aware quite early on of something I thought odd yet intriguingly satisfying about it – it has the same melody as the revved-up blockbuster “Seventy-Six Trombones” from the same musical, even though this is quiet and contemplative:
I never much cared for this next song, even though I like Linda Ronstadt and I know it was really popular:
And then there’s this song of clever repartee between two people who think they haven’t yet met their true loves but who profess to know exactly what they want. The joke is that of course they end up in love with each other by the end of the show, after many twistings and turnings. They just haven’t a clue as yet. This is also from an original cast album; I can’t stand the movie. The male singer here is Robert Alda, Alan Alda’s dad:
Last but not least we have the Bee Gees – of course. Love in all its manifestations was their grand theme, although they also wrote about other things. Loneliness was a big one, too, particularly with Robin, who put his plaintive voice to good use. I love love his voice; your mileage may differ. But I love all three of them, as you no doubt already know. And I like the use of the heartbeat sound in this one. It’s a bit hokey but effective and hypnotic:
And I’ll close with this poem by Vikram Seth. It’s deceptively simple:
All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hands to left or right,
And emptiness above –
Know that you aren’t alone.
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.
ADDENDUM: There are so many other songs on the same theme that could be included. See the comments for readers’ suggestions.
Singing about a love you’ve never met
I immediately thought of Gershwin’s “The Man I love.”
Ella Fitzgerald interprets:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsI5UCTFom4
Billy Holiday interprets:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWvxsQCqi_M
Ah, that Great American Songbook…..
Speaking of Linda Ronstadt, here is one of my Ronsstadt favorites.Rogaciano El Huapanguero .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vnHMJWt1jM
She may have hated Republicans, but she could sing…
Gringo:
Absolutely a great one. There are so many. “Someone to Watch Over Me” is another:
What wonderful songs! Special thanks for “Goodnight My Someone” and for The Bee Gees, of course. Happy evening, dear Neo! And good night for me, its too late here 🙂
Funny, Neo, when I read your first two paragraphs, “Goodnight, My Someone” came immediately to mind.
I nominate “Some Enchanted Evening” from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific: Here’s a version recorded by Ol’ Blue Eyes himself in 1949:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng3XJnC8IN8&ab_channel=catman916
That was back when Sinatra was still a skinny kid from Joisey– and some of the color photos in the video show just what a bright shade of blue his eyes were.
Another one: “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” from Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady: Here ‘s Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle in 1964:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5fW7sERw7I&ab_channel=withlotsabutta
Yes, Eliza gets around to mentioning “someone’s head resting on my knee” somewhat late in the song, but she’s still looking for romance as well as an escape from the London streets. Anyway, the dancing is one of those things that makes older musicals so enjoyable to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HaH0X7wQxN0
Dvorak’s Rusalka: Song to the Moon always brings to mind the intensity of youthful infatuations.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qxi-sYUT9s&ab_channel=BazzasBest
Great calls, all!
For me it’s “Where the Boys Are”:
____________________________________
Where the boys are
Someone waits for me
A smiling face
A warm embrace
Two arms to hold me tenderly
Where the boys are
My true love will be
He’s walking down some street in town
And I know he’s looking there for me
–Connie Francis, “Where the Boys Are” (1960)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41_jI3vsuyE
____________________________________
It’s from the film of the same title, which was probably the first college kids “spring break” movie. Pretty predictable youthful hijinks of that era, but the song and the way Connie sings it are sublime chaste yearning.
Another Rodgers and Hammerstein oldie-but-goodie, this one from 1945’s State Fair: “It Might As Well Be Spring”:
Some of the lyrics–
. . . I am starry-eyed and vaguely discontented
Like a nightingale without a song to sing
Oh, why should I have spring fever
When it isn’t even spring?
I keep wishing I were somewhere else
Walking down a strange new street
Hearing words that I have never heard
From a man I’ve yet to meet . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXMEVTtAZkI&ab_channel=Rodgers%26Hammerstein
Skip ahead to 1:20 for the actual song to start.
I’ve always had trouble following directions, so here’s a melancholy song about lost love– called “Forever Autumn”.
It’s actually from a musical version of The War of the Worlds by composer Jeff Wayne. There was a dvd made of the stage production, but it was never released in the United States, except in HD-DVD (which lost the war with Blu-Ray).
It was sung by Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues.
And yes, that’s Richard Burton doing the narration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVe7EoRKoXY
Is this song type possible in these days of hip-hop, dating apps, slut walks and men going their own way?
I can’t think of any 21st C examples, though I suppose such songs exist somewhere — rather like the longed-for companion in the songs discussed here.
Huxley – Found one, from 2009:
Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet.” Fun & upbeat….
https://youtu.be/1AJmKkU5POA
I grew up listening to the South Pacific movie soundtrack. So “Some Enchanted Evening” has to be sung with a Rossano Brazzi thick Italian accent. Except Rossano didn’t actually sing it. It was Giorgio Tozzi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGyfw3yiMT4
TommyJay–
The “thick Italian accent” is ironic, as the character named Emile de Becque is described as an expatriate Frenchman.
Yes, I had seen the movie again several years ago. When I typed it I was trying to remember who the character was supposed to be. A Frenchman indeed. I guess Alain Delon or Louis Jourdan weren’t available.
______
huxley,
I found this one from Adele in 2008. I don’t know her stuff. It sounds like it is a little bit more of a silly fantasy (Daydreamer) than a serious desire for romance.
https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/adele/daydreamer.html
Van Halen has a song about finding love in the galaxy.
https://youtu.be/RZ19nl7OPEU
“Another world, some other time
You lay your sanity on the line
Familiar faces familiar sights
Reach back remember with all your might
Oh there she stands in a silken gown
Silver lights shining down
So when you sense a change
Nothing feels the same
All your dreams are strange
Love comes walkin’ in
Some kind of alien
Waits for the opening
Then simply pulls a string
Love comes walkin’ in”
Here’s one, hesitantly submitted by its creator, yours truly, who has a few produced musical dramas under his belt. (Johnny Mathis could run with it, I think; Johnny, are you listening?) It’s called “I Know”:
I see you in the sky, feel you on the breeze
That certain laugh of yours is here, already inside of me
Though I haven’t met you yet, I don’t even know your name
Or where you are, or when you’ll come into my life…
But if these dreams that are so real it feels like I live them
Of the days we’re already sharing somewhere in time
If the best part of me is already you…
Then you are with me — you’re waiting too, my friend
I know, I know, I know
So here’s to you and me, whoever you may be
Let us raise our glasses high — separately is fine, for now
Long as I can sing this song to you, you’re as good as lying next to me
Till come one fine tomorrow, we will turn, and look, and see…
Those dreams that were so real it felt like we lived them
Of the days that we were sharing somewhere in time
The best part of us will finally be us
And we will raise our glasses — and raise our eyes, my friend
And turn, and look and see…
I know, I know, I know.
Le Mot uste:
Bravo!
The Gershwin Songbook and Ella Fitzgerald
https://youtu.be/gDhF-PsDuCw
One of the greatest of their songs sung by a beautiful voice
TommyJay:
Original Broadway cast of “South Pacific” for me: Ezio Pinza in the role. Another Italian – must be a Thing. We had the entire musical in one of those thick albums that contained a huge stack of 78s, prior to long-playing records.
But here’s the definitive version:
Wow, that version is great. I wonder if the actress developed chronic hearing loss in her left ear.
As a kid I would imitate it, “… acrrross a crrrowded room” with an exaggerated sonorous baritone voice. So, it has to have that Italian accent.
Double wow. 78 rpm records. I saw a guy at a street fair a decade ago who had a player and some disks. He had a spiel about the play time. About 3.5 minutes Wikipedia says, and he claimed that radio air play became standardized around that.
I know Neo has brought up Hotel California a number of times. I stumbled across a busker this weekend who was playing Tequila Sunrise and wondered if I had disk of Eagles hits laying around the house that I had forgotten about. I did.
Then I discovered that it had a liner notes booklet with a long interview of Frey and Henley conducted by Cameron Crowe. Pretty amazing material.
Anyhow, Frey and Henley had to pull a power play with the recording company who wanted chop Hotel California down to less than 4 minutes for radio airplay. They refused.
Thank you Neo.
Songs are written by guys. We’re interested in a few things. Cars. Rock and roll. And girls. Lose ‘cars’ from the list, because the big interest is actually girls. I ran across the Raspberries tune recently. When I first heard it, I was a shy young lad, and heard it as Please Goooo Awaaaaay. You’re scaring me! I’m just not READY for this! Realio trulio. It’s actually ‘Please, Go All The Way’, which is not at all the same thing. It was a hit tune on the radio when I was just old enough to drive. My dear darling girlfriend seemed to have a better grasp of the lyrics, as well as my libido. The first one that got away. The song’s kind of odd, with the brutal chords in the intro, and the sweet chorus, suitable for whispering into a shell-like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voKihZAN4ng
There’s a part of the 2012 pop hit “Call Me Maybe,” by Carly Rae Jepsen, that I never thought really fit with the rest of the song — but it goes with your theme perfectly. (And, yes, the actual lyrics are terrible, but the song itself is ridiculously catchy.)
“Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad
I missed you so bad, I missed you so, so bad
Before you came into my life, I missed you so bad
And you should know that
I missed you so, so bad”
I always liked that the Gershwin song (see first comment) was “The Man I Love” rather than “The Man I’ll Love.”
Le Mot. I like that. Took some work.
WRT Robert Preston’s brash energy. While doing some drama in high school, I asked our director when we were going to do Music Man. “When we get Robert Preston,” she said. This pleased me since I had had a lead previously in another play and really, really didn’t want to to try to sing. Indeed, I’ve been invited not to sing in a number of venues including drunken fraternity songs and Army marching songs. Lucky escape.
I don’t listen to pop music much but I’ve heard probably all of the songs mentioned above at one time or another.
As my father remarked about a song–can’t recall which–it’s for somebody looking out the window without seeing anything and taking a draw on a cigarette without tasting it.
It would be interesting to know what the unknown lovers those folks wished for or dreamed about looked like. How they acted. How they were encountered. What happened next.
And then see what the next or next several long term relationships brought.
“someone to watch over me” is a warm and fuzzy phrase, and it likely fit the meter of the song to that point, and….. Does it mean abandoning all adult responsibilities for permanent care of an unsleeping sentry? Does it mean things are really tough right now and I could use a hand? Does it mean sharing…some version of life? Yes, yes it does, considering the millions who’ve heard it.
Does the ideal sparked by the song fit the reality of the next relationship? Did it cause one to pass over a likely prospect?
Would be interesting up to a point….then, I suspect, pretty boring.
How about “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)”? Two people yearning for a love they imagine is somewhere else, only to realize they already know, and are involved with, the person.
All these others are great songs.
Steve Walsh…”How about “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)”?
A few years ago, I was in a meeting where a woman was presenting about her company, which had developed a matching system for suppliers and potential customers. I was talking with her after the presentations, and mentioned the analogy with computer dating systems. We both simultaneously started singing “The Pina Colada Song”, to the surprise of some of the other meeting attendees.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zh2n5yQHxCw
Fionna Apple’s singing Cy Coleman’s “I Walk A Little Faster.”
}}} One song theme I’ve noticed before is that of a person who is imagining a love somewhere in the world, someone he or she has never met but wants to meet – sometimes desperately wants to meet, depending on the singer’s degree of loneliness.
I think it’s a very safe bet that there are far more people looking for love than those who have found it, especially the type of “completeness” love we’re talking about with songs like these… The knight in shining armor, the lady of your life. Even if you have an “acceptable” relationship, one can always yearn for something better. Humans are like that, never satisfied. And I think, where love is concerned, it’s often well-founded.
Many, if not most, wind up “settling” for “good enough”, not finding something which is close to, much less is, “perfection” (even as much as you can reasonably expect in this universe). I suspect most probably wind up with 50-75% of “great” at best.
}}} The first is “Goodnight My Someone” from “The Music Man.”
I love The Music Man. By my lights, it’s by far the best of the “traditional” musicals (Oklahoma through up to either Fiddler or Cabaret). MUCH MUCH better than either My Fair Lady or West Side Story.
I’d also note that one of the songs from it — “‘Til There Was You” is one of those few songs Paul McCartney ever recorded a copy of with The Beatles, that wasn’t written by himself or L-McC :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuxZYsCk99o
And yeah, Preston was awesome, just that right mix of Charm and Chicanery/Conman the role required.
As David notes, above — There’s the Pina Colada song:
}}} NEO: And then there’s this song of clever repartee between two people who think they haven’t yet met their true loves but who profess to know exactly what they want.
That’s pretty much what the whole song is about. Two people who HAVE met their true loves, but oddly drifted apart, and went out looking for an affair that had what they’d stopped meaning for each other… and found out they always wanted the same things, they’d just stopped communicating.
It’s not a “never met” story, as much as a “forgot what we had” story, but it still fits awfully close to the bill.
Brian E:
Jeff Wayne’s Musical version of “The War of the Worlds”
The original CD is available, with Burton and Heyward:
https://www.amazon.com/War-Worlds-JEFF-WAYNE/dp/B002896Q54
As well as a newer version:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009CAAGCG
There’s a modern audible version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICyj91GSzQA
Similar to the original, though it’s been remixed (it uses the Burton narration).
https://archive.org/details/WarOfTheWorlds_201506
It’s been gaining/growing in appreciation in the last couple decades… there have been a number of variations made — there is an “immersive experience”, for example.
No idea which of the following is a pure version of the original 1978 release:
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jeff+wayne%27s+war+of+the+worlds&t=chromentp&atb=v317-1&iax=videos&ia=videos
Burton, by the way, had one of those magnificent voices, like Peck, like James Earl Jones, like Morgan Freeman. They’re one of those people who could read a phone book and you’d listen for a hell of a lot longer than you’d think likely.
I strongly recommend the movie Equus. It centers around a very disturbing act, which he is the psychologist sent to examine, but he does such an incredible job with it that I cannot imagine any stage version holding a candle to it that did not involve him as the character.
O Bloody Hell,
I have the dvd of the original stage show with Burton and Haywood. It wasn’t on HD DVD, but a region 2 (Europe) dvd that won’t play on US dvd players. I had an Oppo dvd player that would play both region 1 and 2 dvds.
I have it stored somewhere with all my old HD DVD’s. I see it’s selling for $100 on Amazon. I guess I need to find it. It was/is an amazing stage show. I’m not sure it was from the original production, but it did have Burton doing the narration and Hayward singing “Forever Autumn”.
It’s a shame it was never released in for US markets.
Quite a production. It’s still being staged in the UK (you can watch snippets on youtube).
Here’s the full audio version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16aa5NtpVbw&t=285s
I always loved “Goodnight My Someone”. I recall when I saw the film “The Music Man” it was Thanksgiving Day, 1962 and I saw it with my mother and sister. Shirley Jones played “Marian the Librarian” who was the older sister of the Ronnie Howard character even though she was 20 years older than him. If you were around in 1957 you had a choice on Broadway of seeing The Music Man, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady.
I’m not sure Seventy Six Trombones and Good Night My Someone have the same melody When you hum or “da da” the notes very slowly you can hear the slight difference in notes and note values. So I would call them variations of each other. Picky Picky. I know. George
1970 pop, Todd Rundgren
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XM72dV5SODM
The most prolific and talented composer of the Golden Age – and the most often overlooked – was Richard Rogers. A long career of sustained excellence and variety.
Here he is at the end of his career, in one of his last shows – which helped launch Dihann Carrol.
How did a Grand Old Man write this deceptively simple sliver of a song that expresses youth’s yearning for love to come?
https://youtu.be/fjjuBR3cbQ8
Music and poetry. Add these:
-The nearness of you.
-And even in our sleep, pain that cannot forget, falls drop by drop upon our heart, and in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom to us by the the awful grace of God. Aeschylus, ~530 b.c.
There’s also at least one song in which a guy expresses gratitude that he *didn’t* get the girl that he had desperately wanted…’Unanswered Prayers’.
a guy expresses gratitude that he *didn’t* get the girl that he had desperately wanted …
I have been to many Leo Kottke concerts. He had an early hit with the song “Pamela Brown.” He came to hate the song, maybe just because the of the repetition, and refused to play it in all of his middle and later years.
Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet.” Fun & upbeat….
Ruth:
That certainly is upbeat! Definitely goes against the grain of the more wistful meditations here.
I found this one from Adele in 2008.
TommyJay:
I figured, if anyone, Adele might have hit that nerve these days.
}}} Michael Buble’s “Haven’t Met You Yet.” Fun & upbeat….
Interesting, not usually into popish stuff, but this one does work.
It’s also equally interesting that you can see the chemistry of Buble and the blonde, Argentinian Luisana Lopilato, it LOOKS like they’re already very close.
And I assume they became that way, as they got engaged and married not long after, and remain married as I write.
I don’t suppose”Mille Regretz” fits in here someplace?
Hmm. We ran through these faster than I expected. But I can’t come up with any more either. The Beatles, Stones, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen — nada.
Perhaps, as we move into the performer-songwriter era, anyone successful enough to make it as a songwriter isn’t hard up for a possible someone somewhere out there. Those songwriters are dealing with the problems of real lovers who show up.
huxley:
Except for the Bee Gees, who (especially Barry) could have had any women they wanted from an early age and yet wrote tons about unrequited love, and loneliness. Barry explained this by saying he drew on his experiences of rejection as a very young teen, which he remembered. They also said that despite their marriages and their togetherness as a threesome, they were all very aware of the common human experience of loneliness, which they felt too at times (the – for want of a better term – existential loneliness). They wrote a lot of songs about that.
And also from the Music Man: My White Night. It didn’t make it into the movie–perhaps it was too operatic even for a voice like the lovely Shirley Jones’?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rN2dWOkvH8A
BTW I always loved the way Goodnight My Someone foreshadows the melody of 76 Trombones.
Great column, Neo!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta3jHcbslQw
Fantastic voice Bobby Darin, Beyond the Sea.
In all my many CD mixes for car play, which I often listen to at home, this is one of only two of these types of songs I have, and listen to again so often. [It’s also applicable to me personally, especially the ending -never again, I’ll go sailin’ -]
The other is Escape (the pina colada song).
Some of the existential loneliness seems to be part of the search for God & meaning, and some the impossibly contradictory desires of:
a) comfortable, familiar, safe
b) different, exiting, risky.
And wanting one other person, one soul mate, to totally satisfy all desires.
Ain’t gonna happen – CAN’T happen, at least not always over time. Tho there are many specific times when lots of desires and dream are fulfilled, even the contradictory ones. Like horror movies or thrilling rides, exciting yet safe.
Wife and I just reserved a two week vacation escape to Corfu, Greece, along with two of our kids plus her 80 year old still in good shape mother.
The Girl From Ipanema.
“Ah. yes, I remember it well”.
I presume this longed-for lover is somewhere beyond the sea because if he/she were next door, the problem would have been solved.
Is there a category for next-door still being unrequited?
Tom Grey – may I recommend the rewarding Corfu books of Lawrence and Gerald Durrell (if you don’t know them). And, for its nonpareil placement, the monastery at Paleokastritsa.
Except for the Bee Gees, who (especially Barry) could have had any women they wanted from an early age and yet wrote tons about unrequited love, and loneliness.
neo:
Sure and even the Beatles wrote songs about unrequited love and loneliness. However, the topic here as you’ve delineated it is more specialized :
__________________________________
One song theme I’ve noticed before is that of a person who is imagining a love somewhere in the world, someone he or she has never met but wants to meet – sometimes desperately wants to meet, depending on the singer’s degree of loneliness.
__________________________________
There don’t seem to be as many of those as I thought. That’s my point.
huxley:
Yes, I know that was your point, and I agree with it.
I was dealing with another aspect of what you wrote, having to do with the interface (or lack thereof) between rock or pop stars’ lives (compliant women everywhere) and the themes of their songs.
Also, it was the Bee Gees who did write that last song “Heart Like Mine,” which is about yearning for someone as yet unmet. I find that rather interesting.
Neo. The composers may have known what would sell. Or perhaps compliant women aren’t “lovers” in the sense yearned for.
Frank Loesser from “The Most Happy Fella”
Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by.
Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by.
Brother, you don’t know a nicer occupation,
Matter of fact, neither do I,
Than standing on the corner watching all the girls,
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls,
Go by
I’m a cat that got the cream.
Haven’t got a girl, but I can dream.
Haven’t got a girl, but I can wish.
So I take me down to Main Street and that’s where I select my imaginary dish.
Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by.
Standing on the corner giving all the girls the eye.
Brother, if you’ve got a rich imagination,
Give it a whirl, give it a try
Try standing on the corner watching all the girls,
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls,
Go by
Saturday, and I’m so broke,
Haven’t got a girl, and that’s no joke.
Still I’m living like a millionaire
When I take me down to Main Street and I review the harem parading for me there
Standing on the corner watching all the girls go by,
Standing on the corner underneath the springtime sky.
Brother, you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking,*
Or for the “Woo!” look in your eye.
You’re only standing on the corner watching all the girls,
Watching all the girls, watching all the girls,
Go by
* Written before the #MeToo days, obviously.
Thanks, Le Mot, will try to see:
” the monastery at Paleokastritsa.”
Don’t know the books tho, … (DDG later) but a couple of titles seem cool:
“My Family and Other Animals”, and “Birds, Beasts, and Relatives”
seem remarkable – so I remark on such titles.
https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/11/25/lawrence-and-gerald-durrell
I confess to having trouble finishing A Confederacy of Dunces, tho the very fat Ignatius has met and is in a strange kind of non-sexual love for Myrna, so it’s not quite unrequited love, and there are no songs in this book.
It’s 2am and the storm from Vienna has hit and it’s now pouring rain with wind, after a blistering 38 C (~100F!) Friday.