Oldies

As I was driving to work today, I was listening to some oldie love songs. These are songs from the 60’s. They’re surprisingly good. The lyrics are simple and clever, but at the same time, they capture a poignancy that many pop songs today simply lack.

One song “Tennessee Waltz” is about how a woman loses her love to another friend during this waltz. She was dancing with her lover to the music when they run into a friend of hers. Her friend cut in on them and began dancing with her lover. And that’s when she knows that she has lost him forever.

Another song is called “Dear John” a soldier, so happy because the war was over and he was able to go home at last. Then he gets a letter and it starts with “Dear John, it pains me to say that I have lost my love for you. Today I wed another.”

Yet another love song has a woman singing that she was attending an ex’s wedding. She sees him stride down the aisle, with a smile, in his dashing manliness (okay that line was cheesy). Then she sings, “Your mother was cryin’. Your father was crying’. And I was too./ The tears were falling because we were losing you./I say goodbye to my happiness” Okay that’s all I can remember of the exact lines, but the song is very good. Catchy but sad at the same time.

Many old songs deal with loss, change of heart, feelings that were once there but no more. I wonder…most of the people who wrote these songs are now in their old age. Does that change anything at all? When you look back on your life and all the people you may have come across and then lost, what extra wisdom does old age bring? Does it bring relief from sorrows? Does the knowledge of impending end bring relief, freedom, or does it in fact add to the sorrow, the feeling of having lost something irreparably and that you must carry that regret and pain to your grave?