Music Love Week: Kickstart My Heart

Howdy all! Hope your Valentine's Day was spent with someone sweet. Or maybe that you were able to eat something naughty. (I got some heart-shaped Reece's!)  Or, better still, both. :)


However, I know this week hasn't been all sunshine and over-priced roses for everyone. No, sometimes love hurts. It's a special kind of agony, a pain that almost everyone has felt at some point in their lives. Yet, mysteriously, the loss or absence of love almost always leaves us feeling isolated. As if that giant hole in the middle of our soul can't be seen--or filled--by anyone. One of life's more torturous ironies, I think.


In that vein, I wanted to dedicate my last post of the Music Love Week to the folks who are going without. The people to whom the L word sounds more akin to an impending war drum of doom than the sweet nothings tossed from a lover's lips. An ode to the jaded, the angry and the resigned. Again, we've all been there. Most of us more than once.


Being a writer type, I'm always interested in how people articulate emotion. Expression is the meat of what we do. Do your characters get pissed when they're having love problems? Do they pine? Do they withdraw? Do they get reckless? Do they over-think? Go all stalker-crazy? Hopefully any and all of those things, because that's how real people deal with it.


Thing is, writers often get it wrong. Our characters all too frequently fall into the depression/hopeless side of things when love doesn't go their way. Sure, that's a typical way of dealing with it, but sometimes people lash out too.


I've found that musicians are particularly crafty when it comes to expressing love and the angst it can cause. None more so than rock musicians. You wouldn't think so, because the genre isn't always the most subtle and nuanced. But that's why I think they're specifically gifted at it. 


Love isn't always very subtle, particularly in the moments when it's causing problems. It can scream. It can bite. It can twist us up in knots that take years to be undone.


As such, here are some of my all-time favorite rock songs dedicated to the destructive power of love. Give 'em a listen and see if you can't find a better way for your characters (or you) to express the hardship. And to those who might be experiencing real love strife, I'll leave you simply with this:


ROCK ON









What are your favorite love tunes (angry or no)?


~EJW~