I Hate Silly Love Songs

Okay because I'm Black I feel guilty that there is a large swath of Black music that I don't like. I try to give it a chance and I still hate it. Right now I'm in the process of listening to and reviewing Brandy's Two Eleven and I figured it out. I figured out why I don't like Jill Scott's Under the Sun or Anthony Hamilton's Back to Love.





So now allow me to tell you what's wrong with silly love songs. First off let me say that while I noticed this in R&B it's not just them.



By the way Paul love you, hell I like, "Silly  Love Songs" just not silly love songs.



Anyway. Let's look at R&B. And yes there is a racial component for better or worse R&B is one of the flag-bearer genres for Black music. When Hendrix first came on the scene he had a hard time getting airplay because he didn't fit easily to that mold.
For a more contemporary example take FeFe Dobson.


Okay she's technically Canadian, but the point stands.

Though I disagree with it, when people think Black music they think either hip hop or R&B, which means that for a lot of folks this is going to be their first or even on occasion primary experience with Black culture and by extension Black people. And that statement includes the black teenager coming to grips with racial consciousness having figure out for the first time in their lives this weird subconscious line between black culture and mainstream culture, asking themselves what it means to be Black in America.

And since this is a post about music.

The point I'm trying to make is that this music is one of the few ways African Americans as a group can communicate with the American people as a whole. I love the Wire, but it had horrible ratings. I also love listening to and reading Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, but do they have the ear of the people watching the Real Housewives of Atlanta though?



Now I'm not one of those positive message wonks, but I do believe that if this is how the American people are going to view the African-American experience it needs to be more diverse than, "I love you. You love me. We're a great big family"

What are our likes, dislikes, fears, worries, experiences etc. We as a people are more than silly love songs.

Now onward my donkey towards that windmill. This is not just R&B. It seems like the entirety of the mainstream music industry, hell the entertainment industry as whole has been moving this way. And what I am going to say has echos as to what I said before. This is American culture. Movies and music are how to a large degree how we commune together as a people. And silly love songs are dumbing us down. They aren't just love songs they're silly love songs. They don't talk about relationships in an adult way.

Reading Romeo and Juliet you know what I realize their fatal flaw was? They were in love with the idea of being in love rather than actually being in love. And unlike twilight Shakespeare wrote in a way the audience could see how rash and stupid they were being, especially with the convoluted fake death plot. What could possibly go wrong? I don't know?  They die.

Okay now I'm going to be an ass and impose my definition of love on the rest of you.  Love is knowing that despite how much a person bugs the shit out of you, you want to have that person around you anyway. You enjoy who they are enough to overlook the crap that would want to make you want to smash someone else's face in. Because let's face it in a long-term serious relationship that lovvy dubby crap is going to get old fast.



Of course this is coming from the maladjusted misanthrope who's probably going to die alone and miserable so what do I know.