I'll Have to Say I Love You in a Song

I've been experiencing a significant amount of internal resistance to speaking my truths lately. I'm in a battle over what I need to defend versus what I need to surrender. At the end of the day, usually the communication should just be distilled down to this: I love you.

Artist: Jim Croce
Year: 1973
Rating: Warm

Fame, Redux

Last in my head on March 23, 2010. This time, I can't say that confidence is pouring from my pores in synch with this exuberant anthem. The song feels incongruous with my recent moods, indeed. Maybe my unconscious mind is trying to snap me out of these self-flagellating doldrums. Will it work?

Artist: Irene Cara
Year: 1980
Rating: Luke Hot

Who's Johnny

My housemate Scott just came into my room, incredulous that I could even know this song, given the unbelievable truth I just told him: I've never seen the movie Short Circuit. But I was alive and cognizant in 1986, my first year of high school, when this feel-good ditty dominated the pop charts for its split second.

Artist: El DeBarge
Year: 1986
Rating: Warm

More Than This

It's no small feat when such a simple song lyric captures not only the grief and disappointment, but the absolute beauty and transcendence, of the sentiment that this is all there is. It's one of the most elegant, evocative pop songs, ever. Today, it's bringing tears to my eyes.

Thanks, Mr. Ferry.

Artist: Roxy Music
Year: 1982
Rating: Hot!

Every Morning

The power of suggestion produced this earworm. Two nights ago, at trivia, I cluelessly suggested that the photo of Jason Mraz might've been Mark McGrath, but then remembered that Mark McGrath was the Sugar Ray dude who looks kinda like Ethan Hawke.

Now, I'm stuck with a four-post bed.

Artist: Sugar Ray
Year: 1998
Rating: Cold

Otherside

So meh about this band. But there they are.

Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Year: 1999
Rating: Lukewarm

Tutti Frutti

It's hard not to take this song for granted, hearing it approximately a bazillion times over the course of a lifetime, but it was a revolution in 1955, and it's still in my head in 2012.

Artist: Little Richard
Year: 1955
Rating: Luke Hot

Note: This performance is from the 1956 film Don't Knock the Rock.

Luke Hot!

I've always been lukewarm about the term I chose in my song ratings system for the degree between "Warm" and "Hot." "Warmish-hot" is so literal, not elegant at all. So I encouraged my readers to chime in and pick a new word or term I could use to designate songs I really really like, maybe even love, that intermediate step between genuinely liking a song (Warm) and thinking the song is The Absolute Shit (Hot!).

Luke Hot is the clear winner, among other ideas I was variously warm or just lukewarm to. Honorable mentions go to "Steamy," "Preter-boil," "Somewhat Sweltering," and "Fuzzy." Shouts out, mazels, congrat's, go to my pal Dave Grenetz, who suggested the winning rating. Here's a Hot Luke picture for you, Dave.

Stay tuned, gentle readers and fellow earworm aficionados. I will be changing all songs rated "Warmish-hot" to "Luke Hot" over the next few days. I'll also be interviewing Dave about the songs stuck in his head in a near-future entry. I think you'll find it Hot!

xo
Sooze

Can't Get Enough

...and then there's just straight-up, unambivalent, hard-rockin' love.

Artist: Bad Company
Year: 1974
Rating: Warm

Last Time in Love

I had a conversation with an old friend about love the other day. She had relayed a piece of advice her mom had given her, which went something like, "Finding people to fall in love with is easy; finding the person you can live with is much harder." This song has such a lovely, romantic quality to it that I can't deny, even as a poly person, that when you find "the one," you've fallen in love for the "last time." There is an undeniable beauty and a loss in that process, recognizing you'll never have those fireworks, that blissful limerent feeling, with anyone else again. I'm grateful, in my life, that I give myself permission to fall in love, in lust, when my animus moves me, and when it moves in my chosen partners. I don't have to sacrifice that newness. But the allure of exclusivity, of belonging to someone wholly, is indeed a powerful one. I also don't deny myself the opportunities, when they arise, of digging down deep and doing the work of intimacy. If love were just the easy fire of limerence, well, it wouldn't be love, now would it?

Artist: Sloan
Year: 2006
Rating: Luke Hot