Stuck in Love

I was about six years old when I first believed that I was romantically in love with another person. I didn’t even know what his name was., I had seen him on the playground during recess;, his bowl cut, camo pants, and black rainboots filled my stomach with butterflies and made my heart soar. I never interacted with him or even made an effort to, but I still held onto the genuine idea that he would notice me amongst the dozens of kids on swings, and it would lead to our eventual marriage. Recesses fleeted faster than a child’s attention span, the school year was coming to an end, and my bowl- cut crush never noticed me. Filled with as much heartache as a six-year-old can, I felt like my life was ruined, so naturally I listened to “I Want It That Way” and “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart)” by The Backstreet Boys for hours on end.  

Love and heartbreak are subjects so universal and central to our experience as people. It’s no fluke that some of the best-selling pop hits in the world like Adele’s “Hello,”, Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance,” Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” and Britney Spears’s “…Baby One More Time,”—– all of which have sold more than 10 million copies—–are  filled with feelings of heartache and lost love. While these artists don’t know us or the reasons for our breakups, it often feels as if they’re singing about us and our experiences with love. When experiencing this kind of romantic loss, songs about the pains of being in love make you feel seen. Someone else knows what you’re going through and provides the relief that you’re not alone, even though it may seem like you are.  

But at what cost are hit songs of heartbreak—– which, notably, are largely performed by women—–produced, enjoyed, and consumed? The cultural representation of love within many love songs show us the crying, begging, desperate, and fragile women who yearn for their lost mysterious male lover. The focus on women’s unwaveringly pain and sorrow, on women’s psychological and emotional trauma that occurs at the hands of men, seems to be everyone’s favourite form of media to consume. Love, romance, and pain dictate the singing careers of so many female and femme artists, and as listeners, we impose (to a degree),  this isolating and limiting identity of being in constant pain at the hands of a man as we continue to demand and consume love songs.  

Whitney Houston’s 1992 hit “I Will Always Love You” has sold over 20 million copies sold worldwide, is number nine on NME’S list of greatest No. 1 singles in history, and can be seen in the number six place on Billboard’s Top 50 love songs of all time, but this song is just a cover and not her own. The track was originally released by Dolly Parton in 1974 as a farewell to her longstanding partnership with Porter Wagoner as she left his syndicated TV show as a performer to pursue her solo career. But of course, her song was and still is seen as a song about romantic heartache and not about genuine heartbreak over a platonic relationship drastically changing. While Houston’s version is an epic soul ballad filled with saxophone solos, Parton’s original recording is a softly sung country ballad instrumented mainly with a violin and piano. Despite the fact that Parton’s hit song acts as a resignation letter and not a love letter, she’s been cemented as a queen of love songs due to songs such as “Jolene,”, “Holding On to You,” “Even a Fool Would Let Go,” “Fool for Your Love,” and “Baby Come Out Tonight.” 

While Parton has recorded and performed a plethora of love songs, she didn’t construct many of her romantic hits. For instance, “I Really Got the Feeling” was written by Billy Vera, Merle Haggard wrote “You’ll Always Be Special to Me,”, “Slow Healing Heart” was composed by Jimmy Rushing, and “Fool for Your Love” was written by both Michael Omartian and Leo Sayer. If it wasn’t clear by the titles of these songs, they all focus on yearning for a lover, contemplating love, and attempting to come to terms with heartbreak. In contrast, many of the songs that Parton has written for herself stray away from romantic love and instead show her as an individual existing separately from romance. Released in 1976, Parton’s self-penned “Shattered Image” covers issues of self-esteem, insecurities, and destructive criticism. Parton wrote the iconic hit “Just Because I’m a Woman” in which she unapologetically demands for gender equity and discusses taking on life on her own terms. On numerous occasions, Parton has described “Coat of Many Colors” as her favourite song she’s written; the song tackles the topic of experiencing poverty as a child, an issue that was a reality for Parton prior to her immense success. “When the Sun Goes Down” is an ode to her home, country roots, and community, and is filled with yearning for the familiarities of rural America. Parton’s obvious stray from writing exclusively on songs about love clearly shows her refusal to simply be a woman who writes songs about men she can’t have or no longer has. Parton forces her listeners to see her as a complex being as she navigates in a liminal industry. While Parton’s large production of non-romantic songs is important, it unfortunately hasn’t made much of a dent in changing the patterns of consumption when it comes to women’s emotional trauma.  

I know Taylor Swift’s music as exclusively being love songs. This may be because I almost only listen to “Back to December,” but it’s also largely because this is what she produces because it’s what’s expected from her. Swift has vocalized that she uses her songs to criticize her past lovers and that not all of her songs are factual. While Swift has expressed her interest in singing about love, why do we constantly want and demand it? The toll of continually having to talk about ex-lovers, even if it’s just commentary, sounds so exhausting and draining. Swift has been backed into a corner as a woman lost in and out of love. Even though Swift’s love songs aren’t necessarily forced up on her, as she writes her own songs with little collaboration, she’s constantly reduced and minimized by others who refuse to see her as a woman whose career and identity can exist outside of romance. 

When I was nine years old, I heard the iconic but tragic hit “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis. I had never experienced the type of love or pain that she articulates, but it still resonated with me as I cried literal waterfalls. Lewis’ song would spend seven weeks at number one in the UK, peak at number one in over 30 countries, and it would become the best-selling single of 2007. For the most part, Lewis is seen to have dropped off the face of the Eearth as she no longer has a presence in pop culture. While she’s moved on to roles in film, TV, and on Broadway, most of her singing prospects remain embedded in her 2007 hit. In 2015, Lewis appeared as a guest at Taylor Swift’s Nashville concert during her 1989 tour, where the two would perform “Bleeding Love” together. 

Hits like “Rolling in the Deep,” “Someone Like You,” “Rumour Has It,” “I Set Fire to The Rain,” “Chasing Pavements,” “When We Were Young,” “Make You Feel My Love,” and “Turning Tables” cemented Adele as an expert on heartbreak. Winning the Best Original Song at the 70^th Golden Globes and Best Original Song at the 85^th Academy Awards in 2013, “Skyfall” is Adele’s only major hit that focuses on something other than love. However, the song was written for the 23^rd James Bond film of the same name, and the song essentially tells the plot of the film. While it was a major success, this is likely largely because of its proximity to a film franchise that is so established. Adele’s song simply emphasizes and promotes a man’s role as a saviour. 

FKA twigs ended her five-year hiatus with the long-awaited “cellophane,” which would later be the closing track to her second studio album Magdalene. The song is unapologetically vulnerable, delicate, and impossibly moving as she lays out her relationship, breakup, and criticism that she received for dating, and eventually being engaged to, Robert Pattinson. In “cellophane” twigs asks, “Didn’t I do it for you? / Why don’t I do it for you? / Why won’t you do it for me / When all I do is for you?”. The simplicity of her lyrics combined with the sparse instrumental aspects make this song so beautifully painful. While the track may lack entertaining lyrical metaphors and robust instrumentals, her voice is brought to the centre stage where you can hear the level of emotion that is in every uncomplicated word that’s drenched in complex feelings. She sings “I don’t want to have to share our love” as if the words are burning her throat and the inside of her mouth. Throughout the song, her voice breaks, cracks, and groans as if it’s dragging more weight than she can bear on her own. While twigs has yet to confirm it, it is very clear to many of her fans that Magdalene is an album about her breakup with Pattinson and how it affected her life. The two began dating in 2014 and broke up sometime in 2017 while her album was released in April 2019. 

 The music video for “cellophane” is a work of art on its own, twigs spent over a year learning how to pole dance just for this video alone. Within it twigs’ perreforms an immaculate dance, accompanied by fantastical creatures, before climbing into a fantasy land filled with animalistic and robotic creatures. Nominated for Best Music Video at this year’s Grammy Awards, “cellophane” would lose to Lil Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ “Old Town Road.”. Despite having been making music for more than eight years, this was her first Grammy nomination. While Lil Nas’ win and hit song are so important, his music video did feature big names in the entertainment industry like Billy Ray Cyrus, Chris Rock, Diplo, Vince Staples, and Rico Nasty who definitely contributed to the success and popularity of the video. In twigs’ video, the colourful imagery, visual effects, pure athletic virtuosity of her performance, and story behind the video form such a cohesive and moving piece of work. Twigs’ placed her trauma on display for the world to see and to understand, only to be dismissed by entertainment institutions. We love women’s pain, we love when men are the cause of their pain, we love when women make their pain into something that we can consume and benefit from, but we continually refuse to give any kind of compensation or citation when they utilize their pain for the benefit of others. When it comes to mainstream media, twigs is constantly seen in conjuncture to men and not as an artist. She’s known as being the woman who made thousands of people upset by simply being engaged to Pattinson, (a large majority of the disapproval for their relationship was based on racist ideas) , and as Shia LaBeouf’s most recent ex. She is rarely able to take up space as an individual, or as an artist. 

None of these women I’ve mentioned are some kind or anomaly in the music industry. Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey, Cher, Amy Whinehouse, and so many other women are all trapped in this isolating category of women who not only thrive on, but also depend on, male romance and the pain that comes with being in love. Expressing trauma and pain through music is a legitimate way to navigate through complex emotions and experiences, and I’m not saying that people can’t express their heartache through song or if they do that it’s forced on them. But our enjoyment of a woman’s intense pain from no longer having a man to love her is so distorted. Yes, listening to love songs can be fun and it can be important to listen to them if you’re going through a breakup as they make our emotions and problems feel seen. But no one asks or expects Robert Pattinson to talk about his breakup with twigs as he’s doing press conferences and interviews for his latest film, no one is tracking down Adele’s former flames to ask what they think about her various songs, and no one really expects any of Taylor Swift’s famous ex-lovers to make a song about her. And yet, we expect and demand this from these women. To constantly demand female and femme musicians to be so public about such an intimate type of pain just works to glorify and condone men’s terrible treatment of the women in their lives. We condone it because it gives us something: a song, an album, a music video, a tour, or even merch. By expecting female and femme musicians to be making music almost exclusively about their love lives takes away any dimension, complexity, and identity that they have that does not rely on men. While connections and relationships of various kinds are vital for our survival and happiness, these female and femme musicians should be allowed and encouraged to distance their proximity from men in their lyrics without having to wonder or worry if that will jeopardize their career.