Music of the Day, 9 December 2023

it's just the power to charm

Because I’ve been thinking about romantic love of late, I wasn’t at all surprised this morning when the radio station in my mind started looping bits of what may be one of the most discordant rock songs ever. I don’t mean “discordant” musically: it’s that the energy of the music belies the almost nihilistic lyrics. I don’t know which drew me in more—I deeply grokked the lyrics when it came out¹ and adored the luscious music.

Whenever I think of David Bowie, this is the Bowie that comes to mind. Let’s Dance was the only Bowie album I bought, for reasons I don’t fully understand, because I liked everything I heard on the radio from him. That’s possibly the explanation: his catalog was already pretty deep when Let’s Dance was released in 1983, so I didn’t think I’d need to own his older albums.² (And somewhere along the way, I lost this one. I have only ChangesBowie in my library.)

The call and response of “Modern Love”; the throbbing drum beat; the opening guitar riff; the bluesy piano (that’s often buried too deeply in the mix for my taste) and sax undergirding it all; and of course the bari sax solo and outro solo—it all is so very tasty to me. I knew that the legendary Nile Rodgers had co-produced the album, but what I didn’t know until today is that Stevie Ray Vaughn was lead guitar for it. No wonder the song is so great; and it’s a powerhouse opener for the album.

I don’t know what Bowie had in mind when he sings “don’t believe in modern love,” but it immediately resonated with me. I was suspicious of what I saw as the American ideal of love: romantic love between a couple that (seemingly) always culminated in the institution of marriage. Thinking about it when I was a kid and with my parents’ deeply dysfunctional marriage as my exemplar, it didn’t seem logical to put so much weight on that one relationship and that one type of love; it seemed inherently possessive and prone to jealousy. Yet when I came of age, I trod the same path, having buried my doubts.³

It’s encouraging to me to see writers much more clever and attuned to recent cultural shifts than I (especially

lyz

) focusing on this as an element of the declining marriage rate in the US. This morning,

Al Bellenchia

concisely captured elements of my inchoate thoughts in his essay “Things I Learned This Year,” and went beyond them with a couple of his important observations. It is well worth the few minutes it will take to read.

For me (and I suspect for others), investing so much of my energy and hopes in one relationship was a recipe for failure.⁴ Having a more realistic view of romantic love and a broader conception of love and its value across many types of relationships seems to me to be the best path forward for our culture … if it isn’t too late.

Apologies for the TMI/sermonizing; neither was intended, but I’m not going to change the piece, because it’s been very cathartic for me to create it. Thanks for reading.

1. Although at that point, it was too late for me; I’d buried my concerns and worries and was newly married

2. Money was also a factor back then; and when it wasn’t, my musical interests had shifted somewhat

3. The photographer at the wedding got a shot of “the happy couple” just as we turned around and our pastor introduced us as husband and wife … and boy, was my body language revealing

4. I don’t think the choice of partner mattered that much in my case