Crooning Romance.

All my adult life I’ve had a sneaking regard for the classic old romantic songs (I hated most of them as a kid for some reason, probably because I associated them with a Sunday lunchtime radio programme and the fact that I didn’t want to go to Sunday school.) And sometimes I wonder about the people who wrote them. Take an old Sinatra classic as an example:

In the wee small hours of the morning

When the whole wide world is fast asleep

I lie awake and think about the girl

And never, ever think of counting sheep.

In the wee small hours of the morning

I’d be hers if only she would call

In the wee small hours of the morning

That’s the time I miss her most of all.

Now, first admission: Poetry this ain’t. Not quite Sylvia Plath, I know. If you read the words cold on a tedious Tuesday afternoon they sound pretty trite. But if you’re in that kind of mood, and it’s that time of the morning, and you’ve got the melody and accompaniment to go with it, and Sinatra is providing the sense and exploring the nuances, it gets inside and speaks volumes. What’s more, it tells you that here is a person who knows just how you’re feeling, and that fact somehow makes the feeling shared. Which is what, I suppose, most people got from them.

So what about the people who spent their lives writing such songs? In order to do so they must have been there and felt it all, and they must have done so frequently because their repertoires cover all aspects of the romantic experience. Does that mean they lived their lives on a roller coaster, feeling the thrills and elation, the loss and the longing, over and over again? What a prospect!

And then occasionally I see the lyrics of modern romantic songs quoted on young people’s blogs. They’re not the same at all. They lack the immediacy and conciseness, they’re angst-ridden in a confused, messy sort of way, they’re stylistically and linguistically disorganised. Mostly, from what I’ve seen, they’re just a pretentious mess. So what does that say about the people who wrote them? More to the point, what does it say about the young people who listen to and laud them? Maybe that the wee small hours have changed. The whole wide world isn’t fast asleep any more.