Shut Up And Listen 215

Crazy In Love Like

How come there aren't many songs about just being in like with a girl? Oh, there are far too many to count about loving a girl, a slight bit less about falling out of love with a girl and a good number about fucking a girl, but not too many about liking a girl. I'm talking about that beginning stage where you don't love her or are having wild sex with her, but just like her. Maybe you took her out to dinner or a movie and have kissed her a few times, but that's it. You're really digging on her, but it's just at that like stage. How come there aren't many songs about that?

I've always been the kind of guy who associates certain music with certain girls. I could probably go through the list if I really wanted, but I don't think that's really necessary here. Usually the music I associate with them is what I'm digging on when I begin digging on them, you know, and of course, the song or songs from that album or couple of albums that I gravitate towards are naturally the songs about girls. It's just natural. You're beginning to like a girl, so you associate her with songs where some other guy loves some other girl. But, did you notice the difference there? I like the girl, but associate her with love songs. I don't want that. I'm not ready for that heavy shit, but what else do I have to choose from? It's unfair is what it is.

Might as well use an example from my life to illustrate this point, but don't go telling the girl I'm talking about what I said, okay? So I started kind of seeing this girl about a month or so back. Met her online (as is my style, because I am lame in real life . . . well, more lame than I am online) and it moved rather quickly. Normally, you chat for a few weeks and then maybe talk on the phone a little and then meet. It's a whole drawn out process where by the time you meet, you know each other so well that it feels like a seventh date, except for the physical stuff, which is weird. Anyways, I think we'd maybe been talking for a week and a half before we met up in real life for coffee (well, more accurately, hot chocolate and a chocolate milkshake). That morning, I'm getting ready to leave for school and I put a CD in my discman without really thinking about what songs are on it. The CD was the Twentieth Century Masters version of the best of Eric Clapton. So that is the CD I'm listening to when I meet her for the first time in real life, so of course, what songs do I automatically associate with her now? "Wonderful Tonight" and "Layla". I don't fucking want to associate those songs with her. I mean, I like her and all, and I like those songs, but those are not songs you associate with someone you've known for a month--hell, at the time, I'd known her online for a week and a half and her in person for a few hours. That is just not right. "Wonderful Tonight" is a "love of your life" kind of song and "Layla" is definitely a hardcore "head over heels in love" kind of song. And they are now associated with a girl I most definitely do not love, but just really like right now.

Not to mention when you go to make a mixed CD for a girl. I did this once as I would mention various bands and shit that she'd never heard of, so I said I'd make her a sample CD. Obviously, I picked songs that were good but also some that I associated with her. It's weird because, as Nick Hornby said in High Fidelity, you are using someone else's poetry to express your feelings, except my feelings weren't quite at the level most of that poetry was. You find yourself thinking "God, I hope she doesn't think that I put that song on there because that's what I feel . . ."

I don't think I'm asking for a lot, just a few songs about just liking a girl. I'm tired of having nothing but love songs to turn to when I'm just starting to like a girl. Besides, that first part where you're beginning to like a girl is really damn cool and deserves its fair share of songs anyways.