The greatest love songs are sad songs

By:  Jose B. Maroma, Jr.

If you go down memory lane and and visit your favorite love songs you will find that most of the biggest hits are songs of pain and sorrow. While many are more familiar with American or Western music, our Visayan classics like “Ay AyKalisud” and”MatudNila” also stand out  as songs of anguish. Even the homely “Dandansoy” is a poignant song of farewell. The Tagalog love songs of old are still precious gems in the memory of my generation, but are slowly fading in the technology-oriented culture of the young.

 

Why are great love songs sad? The reasons may be summed up in the title of a popular American country song, “Best Songs Come From Broken Hearts’. If a song is considered a prayer, we reach out more to pray when we are sad than when we are happy.

 

What is the greatest love song in my lifetime? It’s really a matter of personal preference. My choice is the song I’M A FOOL TO WANT YOU by Frank Sinatra. You have to know the story behind the song to understand why I consider it the most powerful love song in my list. Frank Sinatra co-wrote and sang this song after a breakup with Ava Gardner, once considered by many as the most beautiful face in Hollywood, and a woman Frank “could not tame”.  Frank had to divorce his wife Nancy so he could marry Ava. The love story had a sad ending and Frank agonized over it in the words of a song:

 

I’m a fool to want you

To want a love that can’t be true

A love that’s there for others too.

 

Good grief, what’s the stubborn sense in lovingsomeone who goes around with other men?Frank goes on,

 

I’m a fool to hold you

   To seek a kiss not mine alone

     To share a kiss the devil has known.

 

Wow, in Ilonggo we call this loco de amor. Having had enough, Frank wailed,

 

Time and again I said I’d leave you

Time and time again I went away

      But then would come a time when I would need you

And once again these words I have to say,

      Take me back, I love you

      Pity me, I need you.

 

Here was a man so rich and so proud, yet he comes down on his knees to cling to a woman he could not even call his own. Someone said it has takennature a million years to change manfrom an ape, but it takes a woman less than a minute to make a monkey out of a man.