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Why This Remains My Favorite Love Song

And all the weird yet personal ways, it gets to the heart of the matter

Charlie Cole
The Riff
4 min readOct 5, 2023

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Photo by Akram Huseyn on Unsplash

Songs about love are always skirting a precarious line. Somewhere between being overly hollow and a generic attempt at appealing to one of the most fundamental chemical reactions and really piercing through to the truth of something so central to our lives.

I have always found them difficult to connect with as most of them read like submissions to Hallmark’s Valentine’s Day collection; however, now and then, I’m reminded I’m much more of a romantic than I give myself credit for.

When I first heard the Talking Heads’ This Must Be the Place, I knew I had uncovered something that seemed to cut through all of the usual schmaltz. The funny thing is, it’s probably one of their most straightforward and accessible songs. Maybe that says less about its sound and more about what it’s saying.

The song's flighty, airy, and melodic drive gives it a feeling as if it’s floating, an all-too-common sensation of the fall into love. The naivety they were aiming for, in the title and how they play the instruments, brings a sense of simplicity, calm, and ease to everything. “I am arriving at this destination, and I think it just may become my home.” The references to which has always made me feel like a…

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Charlie Cole
Charlie Cole

Written by Charlie Cole

Writer • Photographer • Editor • Champion Overthinker •

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