Over the years in pop/rock music, countless songs have been written to summarize feelings of love, unrequited love, unwanted love, love on fire, and love that has no meaning. A much rarer song explores the possibility that the breakup is having no effect on the singer's emotions - and he'd like to let the woman know this in every way possible (because, you know, he's not really sad). This song sends a message to the woman he loves about how he isn't really feeling that badly at all about the breakup. John Waite's "Missing You" is an example of this type of song.
Contrast this with the theme so well done about broken affairs where the woman is unresponsive to the man's attempts to get back together. In Waite's song, he wails to the woman, if only she could hear, that "I ain't missing you at all." While he might be saying this, his actions and words (he has a "heartbreak overload" and he's "sending a telegraph" to her), overtly express his real desire to get her back.
In contrast, the vast amount of breakup songs detail a triumphant affair gone sour - most often with the woman leaving the man. In Elvis Presley's "Return to Sender" he sings:
I gave a letter to the postman, he put it his sack
Bright and early next morning, he brought my letter back
She wrote upon it
Return to sender, address unknown
No such number, no such zone
We had a quarrel, a lover's spat
I write I'm sorry but my letter keeps coming back
So then I dropped it in the mailbox and sent it special D
Bright and early next morning it came right back to me
She wrote upon it
Return to sender, address unknown
No such person, no such zone
This time I'm gonna take it myself and put it right in her hand
And if it comes back the very next day then I'll understand
The writing on it
Return to sender, address unknown
No such number, no such zone
Return to sender, return to sender
Return to sender, return to sender
--Authored by Otis Blackfield and Winfield Scott
Since I first heard this song, I thought that Elvis picked a good one to make a hit. His reputation is that the girls fall all over him and Elvis, to my mind, was saying, "not true." He identifies with his fans because he can suffer heartbreak too.
The Beatles and the Rolling Stones have songs about broken affairs: "She's Got a Ticket to Ride" and "Ruby Tuesday." The group Player has a great breakup song, "Baby Come Back." (Midi).
Spending all my nights,
All my money going out on the town
Doing anything just to get you off of my mind
But when the morning comes,
I'm right back where I started again
Trying to forget you is just a waste of time
Baby come back, any kind of fool could see
There was something in everything about you
Baby come back, you can blame it all on me
I was wrong, and I just can't live without you
Songmakers, it seems to me, take little risk in writing standard love songs that are either about breakups or get togethers, staying together, being faithful. There are any number of great songs in these categories. And, not to leave out this genre, country songmakers have fashioned an industry out of illicit affairs. Johnny Cash's "Ring of Fire" is in this category (written by June Carter and Merle Kilgore).
But there are far fewer songs about love gone wrong where the singer tries to get back with his lover by downplaying the breakup. This ploy, in the few songs I know, has not worked to get her back yet. It makes for a more nuanced exploration of the range of emotions that befalls people who suffer a breakdown in a relationship.
10cc performed a song that reached number 2 on the Billboard charts in 1975. It's a great recording called "I'm Not in Love" and it musically relates the push-pull emotions that can surge through someone after a breakup, coupled with a nuanced attempt to minimize the damage done to the psyche AND communicating this to the ex-partner in a manner that might get her back:
I'm not in love
So don't forget it
It's just a silly phase I'm going through
And just because
I call you up
Don't get me wrong, don't think you've got it made
I'm not in love, no no, it's because..
And during the chorus, we hear a woman intoning "Big Boys Don't Cry." But he wants her to know also that the picture on the wall means nothing to him:
I keep your picture
Upon the wall
It hides a nasty stain that's lying there
So don't you ask me
To give it back
I know you know it doesn't mean that much to me
I'm not in love, no no, it's because..
Are these statements really a subtle ploy to get her back? Or, are they ways for him to deal with his emotions and he doesn't really want her back? I think it's the former, and is a good example of a very clever song.
This is not to say that men can't sing songs about how little a love affair can mean to him. The casualness of an affair is sung by John Lennon in Norwegian Wood. "That bird had flown" summarizes his one night stand pretty nicely (although I was never certain about whether Lennon ever admitted a sexual realationship with her).
Paul Simon wrote "Kathy's Song" that is telling about the effect of separation and longing (in part):
My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day.
But he also wrote "There Must be 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover." So, he's run the gamut of emotions with this stuff. But, to my knowledge, Simon has never written a song that downplayed a breakup in order to get his lover back. (Except that
"Red Rubber Ball" is pretty close, performed by Cyrkle and co-written with Bruce Woodley of The Seekers.) And, right here, some might wonder why I only detail love songs by men. Well, that's my perspective, although I do enjoy singing along with Carole King:
It's too late baby now
It's too late
Though we really did try to make it
Something inside has died
And I can't hide
And I just can't fake it
Good song, really good song. (Better than the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling").
But the rare song in the category of John Waite's "Missing You" or 10cc's "I'm Not in Love" is harder to find. These songs are ostensibly about a man's desire to let his former partner know he's not that shook up, but, he might say, "here are many examples I'd like to let you be aware of about why we should get back together." These kinds of songs also cause the listener/fan to return to it again and again in order to identify with the singer, sympathize with him, wallow in mutual pain - attempt to understand together and answer that age-old question: "What is love really about?"
A recent song by Gotye presents a visually and aurally hypnotic descent into someone's soul that has been compromised by a lover's quarrel, as Elvis might say. Gotye was the musical guest on SNL last Saturday, and for once, you could actually hear the songs. Is this in the category of song where the man is longing to get back with his lover? If not, it's very close. Only this time, the woman (Kimbra) shows up in the song with her version of events, and in the end, the man is left with his scars and she has shed any remnant of her former flame:
She collected her records and changed her number. He thinks of her as somebody that he used to know, minimizing the depth of his hurt, but wanting her back because she's the only one who (at this moment) can salve the wound. He is left with wailing, yes wailing, "somebody...!" but is still covered up, inside and out, with her memory. And he will always wonder: "What was she really about?"