Love Songs for the Collapse

My favourite selection of songs of love, loss, longing, and self loathing. Some are specific, some are abstract. The glimpse of a memory, something special you can’t fully recall. Sitting awake at night watching the TV tuned to static. A remembrance of a warm Summer's day in the arms of a lover, long since gone, the antithesis of the static and distortion laid bare before you. So cold and disorientating, like the final text message of a relationship in its death throes.

I have an early memory of my life as a child living in a foreign country, the only English language VHS we owned was a copy of The Italian Job, which I watched religiously. The theme music was a song by Matt Monroe, "On Days Like These". I was captivated by the beauty (and the sudden brutality) of the opening scene. This was me falling in love with love, blind to the fact that love can switch from beauty to brutality in a heartbeat. It seems fitting that we begin here. I generally prefer stories or journeys to be non-linear, the Hopi have very little reference to temporal events in their language, everything happens as it should, let’s not get up on “when”.  The oldest song here is one of the more recent I discovered ("Garden In The Rain"), and one of the more recent ("Video Games") tells a tale as old as time. Some of the tracks remind me of specific times and certain people. Some have passed on, some have moved on, but all of them have gone.

I’ve never been a fan nepotism, unless it benefitted me (ha), so I’ve included a song by Bosco Rogers. But, it’s one that was beautifully written and sung by Barth (not me) and my favourite composition of ours.

I couldn’t help regressing to my childhood once more for the final song, a Henry Mancini track sung by Claudine Longet. It’s from another favourite film, The Party starring Peter Sellers. It’s a perfect moment of serenity, at odds with the Jacques Tati inspired mayhem that permeates throughout the rest of the film. The lyrics have a hopeful yearning, maybe everything will work out in the end?



So take solace in these bittersweet melodies that both sooth and taunt. Let them caress you, envelope you. Let them pull your heartstrings tight until they’re ready to snap as you follow the tumultuous journey of love, from fruition to death on the vine, and everything in between. Speaking of vines – or, more to the point, vineyards – I would recommend a nice bottle of Château Poujeaux 2011 as an accompaniment. It will truly compliment the melancholic flavours of this playlist.



These are my love songs for the collapse. Set adrift on a raft towards sweet oblivion, past the point of no return. Love is fleeting and life is but a dream, sweetheart.