The History of Popular Song

The history of popular song is littered with songs of unrequited love, heartbreak and loss. Strewn across the annals of Top Forties around the world are literally thousands, probably tens or even hundreds of thousands, of sad love songs; or, if Bernie Taupin is to be believed, Silly Love Songs. The girl leaves for another man, the man leaves for another girl, the pair of them are torn apart by geography or circumstance, the boy/girl doesn't know what he/she has till he/she looses it; the classic stalking scenario, only actually romantic in a few select songs, where the boy/girl doesn't actually make normal contact with their love interest/victim. And the slightly less disturbing variation on unrequited "love", the close cousin of the stalker, the friend who likes a friend.
The friend-with-misplaced-affection songs can end up in all sorts of places: the slow burn of the untold love, years of heartache for one of the parties concerned as they wonder if they can cross the invisible friends boundary; or the other two obvious variations: one party telling the other their true feelings, Yes or No, two very different songs.
For our purposes here, we need a closer look at the No variation of the friends song, we can dabble in stalker land for a second too, and even, briefly, the breakup song, but what I really want to get at here, what I really want to know, the question burning me up, is: Is unrequited love love at all? Has a large chunk of the history of popular song been filled with unnecessary, misleading tripe? Some cynics would say yes in more than the context we've outlined here, but let us not get sidetracked. Is it ever love if the other person does not feel the same way? Is it destined for the scrap heap of infatuation and (what a wonderfully condescending phrase this is) "puppy love", just because the other person is oblivious, stubborn or seeing someone else? As a side note, the ones seeing someone else have a whole raft of songs in their honour, the your-man-don't-treat-you-right brigade and the female equivalent, for starters. Basically, it becomes the song collection on the ins and outs of cheating and, most importantly, the justifications for it. Long side note, let's get back to business.
Are all the feelings, signs, and general shenanigans associated with love, valid if only one person sees, hears, or feels them? How can only one person think that "we have a lot in common"? Doesn't that require the ubiquitous "two to tango" or even hold hands? Excuse the bombardment of rhetorical questions, but the answers are eluding your faithful narrator, he's hoping for some help from the galleries, some sign from God (which may be hypocritical given his strong potential for not existing, at least not in any useful form), or maybe he's just hoping that he can come to his own conclusions by the end of this page. We'll all just have to wait and see.
Maybe the only flaw to be found in the lyric of the majority of these songs is the continual happy endings, or, if they don't get that far, the hope of a happy ending. Let's face it, in any medium, be it film, television or music, the Happy Ending can be a killer. Would it hurt us once in a while to have a song that has a touch of cynicism, or should I call it realism, in it? Would we all collapse in a heap if just once the hero of the song just said Fuck it and got out of the situation while the getting was good? But this leads us back in a somewhat circular sort of way; remember, I'm asking if unrequited love is real love. And to the outsider, the answer can sometimes quite easily be no. But to the protagonist in most Top Forty songs the answer is often "If this ain't love, I don't know what is!" Or, more often, the question wouldn't even register as a concern; of course there'll be a Happy Ending!
Come to think of it, there has to be more than one flaw to the average pop song (cue dry laughter from the back row). Here's another shortcoming that could be assigned to all pop songs, just by the very nature of the medium: attention to detail. I'm referring to lyrics again here. It's hard to go into the finer details of a relationship in three verses and three choruses?. When you can remove all that unnecessary crap about what is actually said between two people, when you don't have to deal with all the little signs and innuendo, the hours, days, and months that can go into the emotions involved, then optimism is an easy option, and "I know we'll be together forever" doesn't seem like the single most ridiculous thing ever to be uttered by a sentient being.
And it's those very details, mentioned not even four lines above, that are at the heart of my question. How can all those signs seemingly be there for only one person? Are they a quantifiable entity? If you're one of the brokenhearted out there, I know you're wondering the same thing. No wonder the songwriters choose to steer clear of the finer points and stick with generalisation and Happy Endings.
Confession time. If it's not already obvious, this isn't really a History of Popular Song. And I'm not just asking the question about unrequited love for academic reasons, for the common good, and certainly not just for the sake of it; no folks, I'm asking because the last few months of my life have been a roller coaster ride and I've had to try and find answers to all the rhetorical questions I've thrown your way, and I've come up with fuck all.
Hey, maybe I need to write my own pop song, show people how it's done. It'll be a beautiful, concise three-minute wondersong, complete with no Happy Ending and all the gory details summed up in thirty-two bars (that's two verses of sixteen, kids). And don't even start me on the chorus, beautiful won't cut it as a description. There'll be a catchy yet subtle electric guitar line throughout the song, working along side acoustic guitar (for that earthy feel) and a piano part that creates a tear with each tinkle. The bass won't even register in your conscious mind, you'll have to wait twenty years for a Classic Albums doco; the producer in the studio with the master tapes dropping everything out so you can listen to the bass on it's own, only then will it's genius become apparent. The drums will be so right, so on it, you won't notice them either, the snare will only step up on the sly to the mix, tapping it on the shoulder, saying "I'm here, just don't bring to much attention to me."
There'll be a guitar solo, Eric Clapton will tell us (Classic Albums, 2024) that it's nothing short of amazing: all feel, touch, ethereal (lot's of reverb to you and me). He'll be glowing; hell, he might have played the damn thing! The vocals will break your heart and bring a lump to your throat. Neil Young-esque, Richard Manuel-esque (The Band, musical heathens!!), with a touch of Van or Elvis or Marvin, or someone else who only needs one name. There'll be hilarious anecdotes about the idiosyncrasies of the recording, of throats in such disrepair they were almost slit, of a strange sound in the verses tying everything together, that turned out to be the bass player's mother's bra strap put through a wah-wah peddle using rubber bands and mirrors.
But who am I kidding, I'll never write it. It'll never happen. I'm gonna be stuck with circular thoughts and silly love songs for years to come. Drop me a line at http://www.whatthefuckisloveanyway.com/ if you feel like it. I'll respond, it's a soda, it's not like I've got songs to write or anything.