WHERE IS THE LOVE IN THE AIRWAVES?

The Boston Globe

Beverly Beckham

I wonder if the old songs were true. If "It Had to Be You" and "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home to" came straight from the heart. Or were they just sentimentally tweaked to sell? Was love 60 and 70 years ago as tender and innocent as the music made it seem? Or were all the songs “I'm wild again, beguiled again, a simpering, whimpering child again” a lie, truth sacrificed for meter and rhyme?

“The very thought of you, and I forget to do the little ordinary things that everyone ought to do.”

I grew up listening to this kind of music and believing in these kinds of songs. I grew up believing, too, that when people fell in love, they sang and that they continued to sing their whole lives long. Why not? Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and Gene Kelly and Judy Garland all the pretty people on TV sang. And my mother sang along.

Plus, my mother sang to my father. “Why this feeling, why this glow, why the thrill when you say hello?” For their 10th wedding anniversary, she took a bus and then a train into Boston to make a recording for him. I went with her. I watched her sing. I have the record, a 78rpm, all crackly and worn. “Oh we ain't got a barrel of money, maybe we're ragged and funny, but we'll travel along, singing a song, side by side.” on the flip side.

Even hardship, when put to music, was romantic. And there was always music in my house, a record playing, my mother singing, someone crooning something on TV.

I still listen to Perry Como and Jo Stafford and Rosemary Clooney. When I'm home; when I get to choose. But I listen to pop music, too. I like Chris Brown's "Gimme That" and Rihanna's "SOS" and Ne-Yo's "So Sick" And “I'm so sick of love songs, so tired of tears, so done with wishing, you were still here.”

There's more energy in today's music, and there's rhythm and rhyme and sex and anger. But there's no innocence, anymore, “Take my hand, I'm a stranger in paradise” and no tenderness.

“Because of you, there's a song in my heart, because of you my romance had its start.” This is the "Because of You" sung by Tony Bennett that I grew up hearing.

This is the "Because of You" Kelly Clarkson sing now: “Because of you I learned to play on the safe side so I don't get hurt. Because of you I try my hardest just to forget everything. Because of you I don't know how to let anyone else in.”

Music changed way back in the '60s. We suddenly had angst-filled songs. “Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing” and “You don't believe we're on the eve of destruction?” But we also had love songs: "I Got You, Babe," "Cherish," and "Can't Stop Loving You."

So where have all the love songs gone? If music is more than meter and rhyme, if it is an honest reflection of the times, then what today's music is saying is there is no love. Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" is catchy and fun and energizing and boy-meets-girl.

But it's not a love song.” Oh, I know I am on tonight, my hips don't lie. And I am starting to feel it's right. All the attraction, the tension. Don't you see baby, this is perfection.”

The Pussycat Dolls' "Beep" is sassy and instructive. “It's funny how a man, only thinks about the . . . You got a real big heart, but I'm looking at your . . .” Again, no love.

Even Rihanna's "SOS" isn't a love song. “This time, please, someone come and rescue me, ‘cause you on my mind it's got me losing it; I'm lost, you got me lookin' for the rest of me. Love is testing me but still I'm losing it.” It's a song about sex and desire. And that's it.

“Chances are, 'cause I wear a silly grin the moment you come into view, chances are you think that I'm in love with you.”.

Tacky? Old-fashioned? Boring? Maybe. But an invention of songwriters? I don’t think so. I believe the words were true once.

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago.