Ideas About Love

This is my entry to the Melodic Milestone Playlist challenge. You can listen to the whole playlist by clicking here.

The challenge to write about a playlist of songs about my life intrigued me, for many reasons, but mostly because my life has been full of music. I'm not a musician but I come from a family of D.J.s, musicians, artists, writers and poets. So, music and other forms of creative expression were all around me.

I even have a tattoo of a musical note on my hip - although there's no picture of that because after my son was born and my stomach went back to its normal shape, the tattoo didn't. What once represented a brief moment in a beautiful little symphony is now more representative of a squelching fart.

I decided to niche down and write about the songs that make me think of one specific emotion - love. It's just the mood I'm in today, and love can take many forms; romantic love, platonic love, unrequited love, familial love, self-love, a mother's love. They all count. The way I see love has changed over the years as I've grown as a woman and learned about love. So here are the 14 songs that show how my thoughts about love have changed.

The Air That I Breathe - The Hollies

I suppose my story should start here. I was born in 1980 to parents who married in 1974. When they were engaged, my Dad bought my Mum this single, so you could say that it's their song and shaped my early ideas of love and what romantic love between two people should be: that feeling of being completely at ease with whatever else is going on around you, as long as you have that special person with you. I still believe that to this day. It's you and your person against the world.

Frankie - Sister Sledge

Fast forward to 1985. I'm about to start attending school and each morning, I listen to my favourite song, Frankie, about a childhood sweetheart that was never forgotten. It hits different as a woman in my 40s. He obviously broke her heart and abandoned her. Having had my heart broken a couple of times, I see it in a different light now but as a 5 year old, this just felt romantic. It told me that love could endure and that the feelings you have for someone else might last a lifetime.

I Get Weak - Belinda Carlisle

When we get to 1988, we reach the point where I had my first crush and the feelings I was hearing about in songs and seeing in movies were becoming real. The idea that someone else could have complete power over your happiness seemed frighteningly delicious. That boy's name was Jeremy, he was one year older than me and he had absolutely no interest in me. I Get Weak was a song that resonated with me. These emotions and experiences are universal. Somebody somewhere had felt powerless too and written a song about it for me and millions of others to listen to that would give us some kind of comfort and help us come to terms with experiencing our first or latest crush.

Why Can’t I Wake Up With You - Take That

My whole childhood was about unrequited crushes. There was always some boy who had caught my attention who didn't care about me one bit. There were no childhood sweethearts, just me coming to terms with powerful emotions that made no logical sense. I remember playing this on repeat in 1993 during the spring holidays from school, feeling sad about not being able to see this one boy for two whole weeks. In reality, I was twelve years old and wasn't going to be waking up with anybody - but tell that to my raging hormones. It does seem melodramatic and ridiculous now, but every time I hear this song, I feel a little twinge of misery, just like I did then. The boy in question? I never told a soul about that crush and never will.

12 Reasons Why I Love Her - My Life Story

We're in 1996 now and I've had a couple of very brief romances. Not big, exciting, thrilling ones. Just puppy love. And then G came along. My parents hated him, and his parents hated me. We would make out in my bedroom, his bedroom, other people's bedrooms, graveyards, beaches, bus stops... anywhere we could get a few minutes of uninterrupted lip-locking time, and we listened to this song a lot. What I loved about this song was the structure of the lyrics. It was a clever narrative technique, telling the story of their relationship in a list of her personality traits. G just liked the overly dramatic string section.

I wonder what the couple in the song are doing now. Maybe she's sitting in a car outside a school, waiting to pick up her child, writing an entry to a writing competition on her phone. Maybe he's in a dirty flat somewhere, smoking a joint, wondering where he put his dentures and why nobody will shag him these days. Who knows...

No Surprises - Radiohead

All good things come to an end. All bad things do too. I remember having to hold onto a wall when I found out the extent of the cheating and lies... and to be fair, the emotional abuse. The pain was almost physical. The emotional chaos made me feel dizzy. You know how the world turns all the time and we don't feel it? When you find out about something truly shocking, you suddenly feel it spinning. I remember someone playing this on the jukebox. The machine got stuck and had to keep playing it on a loop. Nobody thought to switch it off at the mains. If I hadn't been so entranced in my own hurt, I would have done it.

Writing To Reach You - Travis

In 1999 I was depressed, heartbroken, chronically anxious, had been struggling with disordered eating since 1995 and was agoraphobic. I truly believed that the boy who broke my heart was my one chance to be happy and in love - who was going to want a woman like me with so many problems? I listened to this song a lot because misery loves company.

Then I encountered someone else who changed my mind and the song took on a completely different meaning... I never loved him and he never loved me but we shared a love for Travis. He encouraged me to get writing again. I had always wanted to be a professional writer, but stopped trying because when you're so low on confidence and can't even leave the house without feeling like the sky will fall on you, how do you convince yourself you're worthy of success with anything else? With the support of a man online who hasn't met you so doesn't know anything about all those problems, but sees YOU.

He made me love myself again. For that I will always be grateful.

Kiss Me - Sixpence None The Richer

I always feel melancholic when I hear this song because it was sickly-sweet romantic but it reminds me of the summer when everyone else was in love and I was alone. I wanted to feel this way about someone. I was aching for love but agoraphobia doesn't tend to bring opportunities to meet men to your door. By the end of the summer, most of the relationships I envied ended and I learned that envy over someone else's relationship is pointless. You have no idea how deep or superficial that couple's feelings are. We don't know what's going on in someone else's bedroom. Do we?

Stand Inside Your Love - Smashing Pumpkins

This song reminds me of the first time I ever felt platonic love. I remember being a very naughty girl and downloading a bootleg copy of this song from Napster back in early 2000 to make a special gift for my best friend, D. She was nuts about Smashing Pumpkins. She was going to marry Billy Corgan, apparently, although obviously she never did. Every time I hear this song, I'm transported back to the box room where my Dad kept the family computer, the screeching of dial-up connections, the smell of hot chocolate, the impatience while I waited 40 minutes for one song to download (and that was quick!) and the discs that became coasters thanks to the failed attempts to burn a CD for her. I wouldn't break the law and spend that much time on a gift for just anyone.

Another Chance - Roger Sanchez

It's the summer of 2001, my confidence is high and I am living a different life to the one I lived a couple of years before it. It's a while since I've kissed anyone, so I decide to start. Until that point, I had only kissed boys. I had also never kissed anyone and not meant it. Now, I was kissing men... sweaty strangers whose names I didn't know in nightclubs in Magaluf while listening to this song. And I certainly didn't mean those kisses. Not one of them.

The kisses felt empty. But I liked who I had become; a confident woman who was not afraid to own her life and take a chance. So, I suppose this is another self-love song. But it's also a song that reminds me there was one person I wanted to kiss who I never did. I took plenty of chances but not that one. It's a good thing too because...

Country Roads - Hermes House Band

I can't stop smiling as I type this because I'm listening to each song as I write and this cheesy cover version of the old John Denver song always makes me smile. It was the first song I danced to with the man who would become my husband. He was a little drunk and a really bad dancer. It wasn't love at first sight, but it was love at first kiss. I remember grabbing him halfway through the song and planting my lips on his, and I thought, "Yes, this is the one I want."

I still feel like I have come home every time I kiss him.

Hero - Enrique Iglesias

I feel like I have come full circle now because just like my Dad used to buy records for my Mum when they were dating, this wonderful man I had met, Alex, bought CD singles for me whenever he heard a song on the radio that he thought I might like. At this point, I was deep in a Papa Roach loving emo-phase so the thought of being given an Enrique Iglesias song would have been horrifying - if I hadn't been completely besotted with the man who gave it to me. I loved it. And that's when I knew I was in real trouble.

It Must Be Love - Madness

In 2005, I married Alex. I remember feeling extremely stressed about choosing a song for our first dance. It had to be something that felt like us and one day, Alex came home and said, "What about It Must Be Love? The Madness version?" It was perfect. The lyrics said exactly everything we felt for each other. It was quirky, romantic, happy and not overly-dramatic. Whenever it is played on the radio or a music channel now, our son is the first to turn it up and say "Your song's on!" and I love that.

What’s My Name - Rihanna and Drake

In 2011 I experienced the deepest and most overwhelming kind of love I have ever felt. It's not until you become a mother that you learn that there's a whole other level of love you never knew about until you've carried a child in your body and your hearts were physically connected. I don't know if people who adopt, or fathers feel this way about their children. I have two step-children and the love I have for them is familial but quite different to the love I have for my own son.

This song represents the night feeds period of my life. My little baby Luke in my arms, gazing up at me as I sang along to this - out of tune, and only knowing half the words, and it was possibly the most inappropriate song to sing but he was weeks old so he had no idea what it was about. It was special and even though my singing occasionally made him cry, it's a memory of a time when I learned that no man on earth can break my heart like my son can.