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If we were to take a good look at the great songs in the history of music, we would soon realise that the vast majority revolve around two sides of the same coin: love and the lack or loss of love. Focusing on the good side of the coin, we kick off the second chapter of the This Is Our Music series with “Do You Love Me?”, a song written in 1995 by Nick Cave which will serve as a connecting link with some of the bands that will be performing at the XIth annual Benicàssim Festival and who have used love as one of the main themes of their songs.
We have chosen “Do You Love Me?” because it is a song about one of the most representative moments in the musical career of these Australians. Verses like “I found her on a night of fire and noise, (…) I knew from that moment on, I’ll love her till the day that I died (…) Do you love me?…Like I love you?” perfectly sum up the most common themes of the compositions of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, in which, ever since the late 80s, it has never been an easy task to differentiate between carnal love and spiritual love. Essential discs such as “Let Love In” (1995), “The Boatman’s Call” (1997) and “No More Shall We Part” have given us some of the most personal and suggestive lyrics of our times in songs like “Straight to You”, “Into My Arms” and the more recent “Love Letter”, “He Wants You” and “Get Ready For Love”.
Another veteran band that will be playing at the Festival this year, The Cure, is a perfect exponent of the art of writing love songs. It is well known that Robert Smith presented “Lovesong” to his wife on their wedding day. In the near thirty years of this British band’s career, they have continually indulged their more romantic fans with songs like “Just Like Heaven”, “Pictures of You”, “Trust”, “Treasure “, “There Is No If…” and a long etc. of others which bear the personal and inimitable hallmarks of their style.
Those who go for the more evocative edge of classic rock and roll will want to keep Richard Hawley in mind. His crooner aura of days gone by, his slow and melancholy tone… how we hope that his set includes the breathtaking epic “Oh My Love”, the passion of “The Nights Are Made for Us”, the declaration of love in “Baby You’re My Light” and the purely hypnotic moments of “Hotel Room” and “The Ocean”.
We can find this same kind of melancholy in the melodies of Kings of Convenience, a Norwegian band whose acoustic sounds describe and reveal a stunning range of feelings on “Quiet Is the New Loud” (2001) and “Riot on an Empty Street” (2004). With songs like “Love Is No Big Truth”, “Failure”, “Singing Softly to Me” and “I Don’t Know What I Can Save You From”, this band speaks from the heart about the dilemmas of love in a way that their listeners can always identify with.
If there is anything that really characterised the greatest songs of Suede, it was the melodramatic tone of their first albums. For diverse reasons, destiny has brought the talents of Bernard Butler and Brett Anderson back together as The Tears to continue making songs for lonely hearts. The odes to nostalgia that we will find on their debut disc will surely live up to the highlights of their glorious past.
Masha Qrella and Carrie move in more or less similar territory. Although each one has her own distinctive voice, they are both noteworthy for their abilities to bring out the most emotional side of music with songs like “I Want You to Know” and “You Won’t Be There” by Masha Qrella, and “Complicado” and “Honey Blue Star” by Carrie. The direct and indirect allusions to love and the lack or loss of love take on a whole new meaning with their unique forms of expression and symbolism.
Manuel Pinazo/Aldo Linares
NEWS
Domingo, 06 de Julio de 2008