How To Write A Good Love Song: Actually Be In Love

Love is one of our favourite things to write songs about. Yet so many songs about love are rubbish. Why?

Paul McCartney once sung:

“You’d think that people would have had enough of silly love songs,
I look around me and I see it isn’t so.”

Now, no offence to Sir Macca, but although he may be correct in saying that the world still needs good love songs, that day he managed to add a spectacularly terrible love song to the canon.

The difference between a ‘good’ love song and a ‘terrible/silly love song’ is actually quite simple. But before we get into that, let’s acknowledge the obvious.

Individual Taste

There is no flavour of ice cream that’s gonna work for everyone. Hey — some people don’t even like ice cream! (Q: Whaaa? A: Vegans. They like sorbet).

Same with music. One person’s ‘Crazy In Love’ is another person’s ‘Sweet Dreams.’ One person thinks Ed Sheeran’s ‘Perfect’ is the best love song in decades, someone else vomits and switches on Radiohead’s ‘Weird Fishes.’

So we’re all different, but that’s not news to anyone.

‘Silly Love Songs’ was still a hit, you might say — and we may marvel at that, clearly enough people were into it to collect another small fortune for the record execs.

So why, apart from individual taste, do I think it’s a terrible love song?

If You Feel It, They Feel It

A key aspect of songwriting is the ability to communicate emotions through music and words.

If we play anger on the guitar, it sounds angry. If we whimsically play piano, it carries the sense of a daydream. If we play in honour of our beloved, it carries that intention and people will feel it.

In fact, human beings are incredibly good at picking up on emotional vibes in music. Before the message has been interpreted, before the musical progression becomes familiar, the emotional tone of the track is the first thing that we encounter and make up our minds about.

This is because we are emotional beings, and we automatically interpret emotion in each other’s body language, noises and actions. In some senses it’s the first line of communication.

How this translates into musical interpretation is simple.

We Want Authenticity

Not everyone has spent 10,000 hours writing music — but nearly everyone in modern society has done their 10,000 hours listening to music. You could say we live in a world of expert listeners.

This means that often we know what we like — and partly that has to do with whether the music is authentic.

The search for authenticity asks the question: Is the emotion real? Is that singer really in love — or are they just parroting what someone in love might say, and recycling previous techniques that have led to successful love songs?

The answer to this question can make or break an artist. If people find someone believable, then the invisible gate opens to trust and respect, and the artist becomes a venerated figure. If not, they’re a fake, selling out and using cheap creativity to get there. All in the eye of the beholder, of course.

Perhaps Paul McCartney was bursting at the seams with love the day he wrote ‘Silly Love Songs.’ It just doesn’t sound like that to me. And because of that, I’ll change the radio station with mild disgust every time it comes on… it’s an instinctive response!

For some reason, Van Morrison’s ‘Crazy Love’ elicits a completely different response. I also enjoy love-themed tracks such as ‘Where Is The Love?’ ‘8 Days a Week,’ or ‘At Last (My Love Has Come Along).’

The thing is, McCartney had written dozens of great love songs before ‘Silly Love Songs.’ By that point he could write them in his sleep (and did…). My personal theory is that he was on autopilot that day — and tapping into his vast experience of writing love songs, just went for it.

Many of his earlier love songs I actually quite like. Call it excellent craftsmanship, authentic emotional expression or my personal taste, I enjoy many of them. I can feel the energy flowing through the tracks, the vocals are alive (and perhaps the songwriting is just better, too).

But he was younger then, with more love relationships and the energy of unexplored territory.

When we are yet to explore so many emotions through music, we are entering unknown territory — and this excitement/anxiety alone can be enough to charge our creations with powerful feelings.

Write When You Feel It

Ultimately, some songs are charged with emotion, and others aren’t. There is no right or wrong to songwriting, however, when writing a love song — being charged with love is definitely more convincing for your audience.

This leads to a simple principle of capturing emotion in song: write when you feel it. Don’t wait until the emotion has subsided — you may lose that chance to write an emotionally driven song.

This can be easier with alienated emotions such as loneliness, sadness and anger, because often we have nowhere to turn except to ourselves and our instruments.

However, love is the great connector, so when we’re fiercely in love we have little need to turn to our instrument — we can turn to our beloved. Just don’t expect the intensity of that emotion to wait around for you, one day the feeling of love may have passed and your opportunity to write an authentic love song with it…

Don’t worry, you can always fake it. Or sing about the memory of love, which technically comes under nostalgia but is still a legitimate emotion.

The most important thing is to write from your own emotional experience — because people can tell when you’re not. That way, you’re being true to yourself as well as genuinely opening yourself up to be seen by yourself and others.

And that may just be the purpose of art.