By Tony Attwood
In the old days, when we had records that played at 78rpm, we used to say there were three types of song: songs about love, songs about lost love and songs written for some new dance craze in which we were told that everyone was doing that particular dance, and they were all having a great time.
Do that dance, it was implied, and we would be happy.
Added to this, we also had occasional songs of other genres: Christmas songs (I am sure you can sing “I’m dreaming of a White Christmas”) and the very occasional humorous songs. So three dominant themes within song (love, lost love and danc), plus Christmas songs (at that time of year) and humorous songs (which tended to race up the charts and then vanish for good) were the subject matter of songs it seems, and as more and more of the world was charted and mapped, so the going away to a distant lands concept which turned up in older folk songs, tended to drop out from the option.
Of course there were occasional other topics that cropped up from time to time, such as celebration, becoming a full person and gaining confidence, sadness and grief (either because the subject of the song has gone away or has died), and social and political issues. such as rebellion and protest. Separate from all these of course, are the religious songs which would often have their own form of music as well as their own lyrics. Happiness was promised in the afterlife, but not necessarily now.
Endless variations could be created within and from these types of song, especially with lyrics that looked back or forward in time, either wishing or demanding that life could be like “that” again – however “that” was. This could lead into nostalgia or the promise of better days to come. But not really good times now.
(That of course, isn’t true with songs about dance, and as one who has spent much of his life dancing the jive form of dance, I would agree with that. I think I’ve gained more happiness through dance than through most other things… but I am wandering from my theme).
Most songs seem to be about love and lost love, with lyrics that express their own position in the world, with perhaps one of the most popular approaches being that of saying that my world is nothing without you. Which, when one thinks about it, can be a fairly catastrophic approach to life in that it puts happiness firmly in the hands of another person, and makes the singer’s happiness dependent not just on that person but on that person’s attitude.
Beyond this, of course, we then have songs which have a religious theme, and it was in thinking about these alongside the other areas of subject matter noted above that I began to realise an issue that I had not fully considered before (and which you may well wish to disagree with – or at least consider in a different way).
It is just how many songs express the fact that fulfilment comes from without, not within. Thus one may get fulfilment through love (which means the fulfilment is dependent on another person) or be denied by others (I’d put “Masters of War” in such a category, along with all the lost love songs). Songs that say, I can have happiness but others seem very keen on taking it away from me.
And at this point I started to struggle to think how many Bob Dylan songs there are which put the singer’s happiness in her or his own hands. Within folk music this was often expressed in relation to travelling to distant shores, or indeed simply leaving town. Bob Dylan gave us “Masters of War” as such a song. Approaching the same issue from an utterly different direction he gave us the “visions of Johanna, where thinking about the woman kept him up all night. And I’ve never really felt those thoughts were positive and helpful.
Of course composers write songs that go outside of those basic three subject areas, and I am sure we can all name some of them. And of course if I start naming a few that I remember, I’ll quickly be asked how could I have forgotten this or that song.
But here is my point: most songs which express happiness put the cause of the happiness within the control of someone or something else. Most of the songs that I know don’t seem to put happiness within one’s own control.
Now I know at once that writing a sentence like the last one can potentially get me into trouble, as perhaps readers will kindly write in and say “what about…” and name half a dozen songs that fit the category of songs that can make us happy. And in this case that is fine – I would like to be dissuaded here. But most such songs put the origin of positive thoughts under someone else’s control. It’s not me or the everyday world that makes me happy – it’s other people cheering me up.
For I am suggesting that most songs that are written, including the songs Bob Dylan has written, put the happiness of the individual in the hands of someone or something else rather than in our own hands.
Now a song that says, “I love you” might seem to contradict such a view because there are tens of thousands of such songs, but as I started to think about them I realised just how many such songs put the source of the singer’s happiness in the hands of the other person. As in, I love you, you make me happy, but if you leave me I’ll be sad, is putting happiness in the hands of another.
From my childhood, I remember my father’s record collection including “Blue Skies” which I quite liked without knowing that it was written by Irving Berlin in 1926 – it was part of the musical Betsy. But even here, love sticks its nose in, because it turns out that the singer sees blue skies all the time because he is in love. One couplet, halfway through the song, is the only place “love” turns up, but there it is
Noticing the days hurrying by When you're in love, my how they fly
… suggesting that love can be lost, and so can those wonderful feelings.
Of course there were songs without love in them – such as the song “The Thing” recorded by Phil Harris, which got to number one in the Billboard charts, is one such example. Quite why we had a 78rpm copy in my parents’ tiny London flat I don’t know, but I recall that all those years ago I found it, and played it over and over again, much to my parents’ continuing distress. “The Thing” of the title is never described – it is simply symbolised by three bass drum beats – played to the rhythm of a dotted crotchet, a quaver and a crotchet – which everyone knew, and repeated as “boom-boom-boom” with the first boom longer and the second boom shorter.
But such songs were exceptions, and were a sort of summer equivalent to the Christmas songs that took over the charts and airwaves (“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” seemed to be present every year in my childhood).
Christian hymns are an exception, of course, in that they generally speak of a better world to come as a central part of what they express – so I guess I am excluding those. And of course there are many songs that speak of “how much I love you” although there is always that undercurrent (expressed or implied) that if the lover leaves, all the happiness will be gone.
Now I have not sat down and worked through my Dylan record collection to find songs that are about happiness that is not dependent on the whim of another person, and indeed the whole concept of “protest songs” with which Bob’s music is often associated seems to suggest that happiness is dependent on others, not on ourselves.
Of course I am sure that the moment I post this little piece I will get some emails saying “You’ve forgotten x y z” listing songs that are about being happy which don’t make the happiness dependent on another person.
And I suppose as an atheist I find that worrying – am I really in a world in which happiness can only be dependent on others making me happy? Bob has given us over 500 songs. Surely somewhere in that collection there must be songs about happiness being found not through religious conversion or the love of another, but within ourselves.
And then I thought of “You Angel You” and I felt a bit better. I don’t have an angel, which is a bit sad, but the thought cheered me up
You Angel You was played on January 14 and 8 February 1990 and was picked up for this site by Mike Johnson in Songs of love, songs of betrayal.