The mystique of love through music

By Noemi Vazquez
Rap/Hip-Hop Journalist

In a world where we celebrate love through gift-giving and expensive dates, many of us forget the intimate love language of music. Serenades, songwriting, love poems, or even creating playlists are such crucial ways to express your love for someone. As many can say, love is not easy. I can argue that, although that is the case, expressing yourself through an outlet like music reassures love’s existence. The divine act of constructing music that reminds you of your loved one shows the intricate details you make out of your time together. Nevertheless, music and love go hand in hand, as they have been for thousands of years dating back to the first civilizations, with the Sumerians writing the first documented love song on a clay tablet called My Honey-Sweet. Many of the first songs were written in devotion to their gods but offer lyrics that depict sincerity from their hearts into a sound (McCollum). Which raises my psyche to believe that love is timeless and embedded in our cycle of life.

Music can not only make the highs and lows more tolerable, but it also translates your emotions into some understanding that some of us cannot express in another way. For me, love has not been the easiest, as my understanding of the emotion has been linked to my most devastating times in life, but with music, I’ve been fortunate enough to find love in life, my environment, friends, and family, as well as my significant other, and I have determined that there is so much love left to give.

Therefore, as a token of my love and a late Valentine’s Day gift, I have constructed a nine-song playlist that translates the concept of love into romantic and platonic senses. Each song is selected carefully, as I describe when I found the song, its significance, and my perception of the piece.  With that, I leave you with a reminder that love is not something to be found; it is an experience that finds you in the most unexpected of places. Let these songs take you on a journey through the divinity of love.

“Ode To A Dream” (feat. Kilo Kish and Coco O.) | The Internet
Purple Naked Ladies (2011)
I’ve listened to The Internet for years, but I encountered this song after a friend of mine suggested I listen to Purple Naked Ladies. She claimed, “one of their most influential sounds”, so I gave it a listen and encountered “Ode To A Dream” and instantly became a favorite. It reminds me of a celestial place, far away from this realm. The repeating lyrics, “I know that I’ll never forget you girl  x3, Cause I see you in my dreams” offer this sound of yearning for someone who is no longer present in your life.

“Faster” | Slum Village & Colin Munroe
Villa Manifesto (2010)
On a rainy and gloomy January morning, I was on Spotify looking at my “Discover Weekly” playlist and heard the most mesmerizing chorus with an impressionable rap come on, and I realized it was Slum Village playing. I found Slum Village a few months before and was intrigued by this rap group, but not in the way “Faster” had me. Lyrical rhymes that embody love like, “When people stay stick together, we forever its embedded & Every time we go somewhere, the essence” signify how their love speaks above anyone else. One of those rap songs that has you grooving but so enticed by the romantic aspect of the lyricism.

“Give You the World” | Steve Lacy
Gemini Rights (2022)
Summer 2022 was the most chaotic summer of my life, and right at the same time, Gemini Rights was released. This smooth and slow jazz-ridden song, the last song of the album, is the finishing touch to one of my favorite albums. With Steve’s high vocal range to the smoothest of vibratos professing his love of metaphorically “giving you the world,” that fills me with such admiration that it touches my soul to new romantic horizons.

“Don’t Let Me Down” | Solange
True (EP, 2012)
I was in my junior year of high school, and I was so sick and tired of the music rotation that I decided to give Solange a listen. I listened to hits like “Almeda” and “Cranes in the Sky,” but I felt that there must be more depth to Solange’s artistry, so I checked her older works, and oh boy, was I tuned into her sound. “Don’t Let Me Down” is one of those songs that acquires the act of professing one’s love with lyrics such as “I moved the mountains in my mind, my mind, you bet your luck, I’ll write your name in city lights” to emphasize the power of her feelings towards her lover.

“WHEN SPARKS FLY” | Vince Staples
RAMONA PARK BROKE MY HEART (2022)
Another “discover weekly” song I encountered last summer. It’s rare for me to find a hip-hop love song without some mention of lust. This song offers the listener the rhymes of begging your lover not to waste your time and fighting for a love that is deemed worth it. Staples personalizes his rap for his lover to highlight the intense fear of loving another person.

“Real” | Kendrick Lamar, Anna Wise
good kid, m.A.A.d city (2011)
In the middle of Texas, with no destination in a stranger’s car, an old friend shuffled through an MP3 player that played this song. It is phenomenal, to say the least, but it is deeper than the repetitive chorus of “I’m Real.”  It offers that materialistic things do not guarantee your sense of self-love and respect. The instrumental is a plus, as it shows the beautiful synths that flow through the song.

“Forrest Gump” | Frank Ocean
Channel Orange (2012)
Frank Ocean is one of my all-time favorite artists, so when I first discovered him, I listened to his critically acclaimed album, Channel Orange. I instantly became nostalgic for the songs, as they were pieces I had never heard at that point in time. Forrest Gump is metaphorically written about Frank’s first love with a man, it is one of those painful love songs, knowing Frank rooted for a man who could not love him back. “Forrest Gump, you run my mind, boy,” like the film as Forrest runs. Frank is so enticed by his love that he simply can never forget it, making this song timeless of unrequited love.

“Letter Home” | Childish Gambino
Camp (2011)
From the violins to Gambino’s assurance of romantic poetry, the song “Letter Home” is wholeheartedly a love letter in music form. It is impressionable, to say the least, that Gambino can express himself in such a vulnerable way that he speaks volumes to the listener with repetitive lyrics like “You’re all I ever wanted” in such an endearing soft voice.

“All I Need” | Radiohead
In Rainbows (2007)
During a healing process, I was with my friend and her boyfriend, and he played this song on a drive to a restaurant we decided to go to. I dropped to tears the moment I heard the miraculous melancholy lyrics of “You’re all I need,” with hypnotic instrumentals all over, tearing my heart into pieces. This song embodies the dark aspect of love, described in the song as “I am a moth who just wants to share your light,” translating into obsession.