Whenever music was invented, the “love song” was created right afterward. From Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet to Etta James‘ “At Last” to Dolly Parton/Whitney Houston‘s “I Will Always Love You” to De La Soul‘s “Eye Know” to the Ramones‘ “I Want You Around,” the love song has taken on many different forms, matching all the various nuances and complexities the emotion brings. So, with hundreds of years of practice, have we gotten the formula down? What makes a good love song? “I wish I knew,” BANNERS, aka award-winning singer-songwriter Michael Nelson, tells HollywoodLife. “Then I could just write loads of them and live in a house made of gold or something.”
Of course, BANNERS – who released his EP, I Wish I Was Flawless, I’m Not, in January – didn’t just leave it at that. With over 1.5 billion streams to his name, a viral TikTok hit (“Someone To You”), and a reputation for earnest and infectious songwriting, he does know something about writing a lovesong. “I suppose it’s going to be different for everybody, isn’t it? For me, I think it’s probably simplicity. There’s a vulnerability in just saying the thing in a simple, very direct language, and we find vulnerability really romantic as a culture. Getting down on one knee, or standing in the rain with some flowers or whatever.”
“So, when you don’t hide behind a metaphor and just say what’s on your mind,” advises BANNERS for anyone writing a song – or a sonnet, a haiku, or a sweet message inside a Valentine today. “I think that’s the most romantic thing of all. Lines like ‘when the truth is, I miss you,’ in ‘A Warning Sin’ by Coldplay or ‘if the world ends, I hope you’re her with me,’ in ‘If The World Ends’ by Guillemots are romantic. I really love the line, ‘everything has changed.’ in ‘Mirrorball’ by Elbow. It’s really hard to express how powerful falling in love with somebody is, that feeling that everything has changed. So, I love that Guy Garvey just says it.”
To help you say what you need to, BANNERS has also provided an EXCLUSIVE playlist of love songs for today (with helpful explanations for you would be Romeos and Juliets.) BANNERS begins his Perfectly Broken UK tour on Feb. 18, hitting cities like Glasgow, Birmingham, and Newcastle over the next fAfter that, There are plenty of grehappen with BANNERSafter that, so now would be a good time to fall in love with his music – and to follow him online for news of new music, new shows, and more.
Glen Campbell, “Wichita Lineman”
I’d have put this song in any list of best songs. “And I need you more than I want you, and I want you for all time.” There’s really nothing I can say that that line doesn’t already do. Just the most romantic thing. Ouch!
Elbow, “Mirrorball”
This is one of the songs in my life that I can’t listen to too much because it makes me feel too many things, and you can’t go about your day in that state. Sometimes you have to really concentrate on crossing the road or high-fiving a nephew. Guy Garvey is one of the world’s greatest lyricists, and this song is the best representation of falling in love that I know of. “Everything has changed.”
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, “Into My Arms”
Okay, I know that this song is about two things: Love and also heroin addiction. I’m going to forget one of those for the purposes of this list and just concentrate on the love bit. Maybe we shouldn’t put people on pedestals too often in life, but I think love songs should do that sometimes. This one does that. “I don’t believe in the existence of angels but looking at you I wonder if that’s true.” Just writing that down, it’s basically a kinda gross chat up line, but it’s Nick Cave and whatever he wants to do is absolutely fine with me.
The National, “I Need My Girl”
Some days you just need to be with your person. It’s the only way you’re gonna get through.
The Beach Boys, “God Only Knows”
Come on now! What can you say about God only knows? It’s maybe the best chorus ever, I reckon.
The Beatles, “The Long and Winding Road”
As someone from Liverpool, I have a moral and (surprisingly) contractual obligation to have a Beatles song in this list. Most people don’t know that if you’re born in a Liverpool hospital, you have to, almost immediately, sign a thing that says you’re going to have a Beatles song in any and all lists pertaining to high-quality recorded music. You’d think such a contract wouldn’t hold up in any sort of court of law, but Liverpool criminal records show us this isn’t true, and I’m not risking it! So here’s a Beatles song. Also, this song is boss, and the Beatles are the greatest.
Coldplay, “Fix You”
It’s all just so romantic, isn’t it? Then, there’s a big guitar solo at the end, which you can put on really loud and go for a run and pretend you’re Chris Martin for a minute and everyone thinks you’re brilliant.
Leonard Cohen, “Alexandra Leaving”
Poor old Len! They all seem to be unrequited love songs with Leonard Cohen, which surely wasn’t true was it? His voice is so deep and lovely, surely all the ladies loved him?! This one is about somebody that you love but she’s younger and more beautiful and you know she’s gonna leave for someone younger and more beautiful, but she’s here now so love her while she’s yours. Don’t turn away. Ow, my heart!
HL: Internet reviewer Todd In The Shadows pointed out how Everything But The Girl’s “Missing” contains the line “I miss you / like the deserts miss the rain” as being a powerful line. Do you similarly have any lines that helped define what love is to you? Your pick of Nick Cave’s “Into My Arms” mentions one. Is there any other line you’d like to mention?
BANNERS: Yeah, “And I need you more than want you, and I want you for all time” in “Wichita Lineman” by Glen Campbell is the winner here. I just don’t think anyone is ever gonna beat that. You have to be careful with the musical arrangement of love songs too. They’re dealing with such a sweet concept, that if you get the instrumentation wrong you’ll make it sickly sweet and the song loses its vulnerability. “Wichita Lineman” has strings and stuff, but it does everything so subtly that it never crosses the line. It always stays so vulnerable. Lyrically, it’s a man on his own thinking. Also, I don’t know what it is but there must be some science in the relationship between some notes that just hits our ears a certain way. A two note moment that we can’t resist, like a dog being scratched behind the ear. “Wichita Lineman” does one of those intervals in the strings at the very end. Gets me every time!
Have you ever experienced a song or an expression that wasn’t romantic in intent, but was used or became one of the sweetest, heartfelt gestures?
“You’ll Never Walk Alone” by Rodgers and Hammerstein. It’s in the movie Carousel, but was a pop hit for Gerry and The Pacemakers. I think Elvis did it too. It’s sung before every Liverpool FC game and has been since the 60’s. I think it started because the crowd needed something to do before the game and that song was a hit at the time, so it was played on the public address system in the stadium. Gerry and The Pacemakers are from Liverpool, so it makes sense. It became such a recognizable thing, that now a few other teams have adopted it. It’s come to symbolize so much that has happened with the football club and the city over those 50 years: triumph, tragedy, heartbreak, joy. It’s come to mean so much more to people that I think Rodgers and Hammerstein could have ever thought it would do. I’ve got a bit of it tattooed on my arm!
What do you think is different about love songs in 2023 than, say, two/three/four decades ago?
Well, the sound of them has changed. There’s probably more autotune now than there was three or four decades ago, but I would imagine, at their heart, that love songs haven’t changed all that much. We’re still trying to reach the same instincts and impulses when we write them and we want to be reached in the same way when we listen to them. I’d imagine the feeling of falling in love is exactly the same now as it was ever since humans were humans and I think we’ll be writing about the same stuff forever.
Where do love and romance go into the future? Especially in terms of music and art?
I can’t really see how anything fundamentally changes. There might be new ways of listening, but new technology is not new ways of being and feeling. I spent the pandemic on my own. I didn’t hug anyone else for months and months and months, and it was horrible. When I finally did hug someone, the experience was so overwhelming I nearly burst into tears. So, my experience was that you can have all the technology you want, you can talk to people every single day on Zoom calls, Whatsapps, emails, Tiktok, Instagram, etc., but in the end, what we really need is human contact.
There are no technological advancements that will ever change that. Music will always evolve technologically, but love songs deal with human emotion, and human emotion is not something that changes just because the number at the top of a calendar does We think of ourselves as somehow more developed, wiser and less impulsive than the humans that existed before us, but we’re no . We’re exactly the same people with the same impulses as the people Shakespeare wrote about or that Mozart wrote for. So, we might find ways to consume songs differently and they might sound differently, but love songs will continue to be about love, and love isn’t going anywhere.