Greatest love songs ever: #48 “And I Love Her”
By Tom Quiner
Renown British novelist, Kingsley Amis, once drolly observed: “Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” This obvious truth is belied by the radical replacement of the nice by the nasty in popular music. Which is why Pulse presses on with ‘The Greatest Love Songs Ever’ series. Number forty-eight on our list is the Beatle’s hit song, “And I Love Her.”
Why on earth have nice love songs like “And I Love Her” been replaced by nasty ones like “Love is Embarrassing” by Olivia Rodrigo?
The Claremont Institute’s Chairman, Thomas D. Klingenstein, explains:
“In order for any revolutionary regime to succeed, it must supplant not just the political order but the cultural order of the regime that preceded it … If we hope to defend and restore the American regime, and the West more broadly, we must reclaim both the moral and the aesthetic sensibilities on which they have long been founded.”
The decline began in the 90s
Pulse Life Advocates has tracked the beginning of the precipitous decline of aesthetic sensibilities in popular music to around 1994. That marked the entrance of the Roe v Wade generation into the world of popular songwriting.
This generation grew up in a milieu that degraded the sex act from an expression of mutual self-giving that produces something beautiful, a child, to one of self-taking that viewed the fruit of the sex act as an interloper to their pleasure, and in need of eradication when inconvenient.
These young songwriters weren’t much interested in writing love songs, and the output of love-themed arias dropped like a songbird in free fall. Their songs were increasingly characterized by an alarming degradation of the aesthetic sensibilities to which Mr. Klingenstein refers.
That leads us to the sweetness of one of Paul McCartney’s early hits. Written when he was but twenty-two, the song is a classic of the young-love genre. There’s nothing sophisticated about the lyric, because it’s all about that beautiful, first blush of love:
“I give her all my love, that’s all I do,
And if you saw my love, you’d love her, too.
I love her.”
Contrast these lyrics, written when McCartney was but twenty-two, with those of Olivia Rodrigo’s “Love Is Embarrassing,” written last year when she was twenty:
“An now it don’t mean a thing,
G*d, love’s f*&%ing embarrassin’,
Just watch as I crucify myself
For some weird second string
Loser who’s not worth mentioning.
My G*d, love’s embarrassing as hell.”
How sweet. Rodrigo and her mentor, Taylor Swift, specialize in break-up songs. Rodrigo, in particular, loves to be profane, which only dissipates any aesthetic sensibilities she hopes to bring to the table. Sadly, these ladies have more influence over our daughters and granddaughters than most parents do.
What a contrast to “And I Love Her.”
Writing credits attribute the song to both Paul McCartney and John Lennon. Lennon claims he wrote the middle section:
“A love like ours, could never die,
As long as I have you near me.”
But McCartney says Lennon only helped out on that section. Unlike his earlier entry to our list (#52, “Silly Love Songs”), “And I Love Her” has been recorded by a diverse group of singers over the decades, something that is unlikely to happen with Rodrigo’s “Love Is Embarrassing.”
Harry Connick Jr. sings “And I Love Her”
A choral arrangement of “And I Love Her”
Pulse believes that love songs are important to softening the hearts of a hardened culture. We’ll be back next week with a wildly popular love song written by a song writing team you’ve probably never heard of. But you’ll certainly know this song and the singer who took it to #2 on the Billboard charts.
Thanks for checking in to this week’s installment of the 52 Greatest Love Songs ever. We’re counting down these songs a week at a time to spread a little love. Love is the greatest antidote to abortion, so be sure to encourage your friends to subscribe to our blog.
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