Songs To Sooth Our Anti-Love Hearts

My Anti-Valentines Day playlist spans several decades of musical genius and talent, seeming all the way back to the days where I wasn’t even an idea in my parents minds. I would say my playlist starts with good ole fashioned Patsy Cline, an original queen of Country music, with her famous words to the song Crazy. I have definitely had many moments in my life where I could sing the lyrics to this song in my head over some guy who I felt “crazy for loving”. Looking back, I was definitely “crazy for feeling so blue” over almost all of the dudes who weren’t worth even a single teardrop.

Now admittedly, growing up for half of my childhood in Tennessee where Country is not only constantly playing on your car radio or school bus radio, it’s almost a way of life. So the cliche of “my dog died, I lost my job, and my love left me” type of Country song is very close to my heart and my head full of lyrics. I learned about the Walkaway Joe type of guy at an early age in high school before I could let myself get into a situation where that could occur. The lovely Trisha Yearwood’s song “that boy’s just a walkaway joe” and the official video I saw on CMT pretty much warned me against those types of boys. I am forever grateful to that song, so I would say that is on the Anti-Valentines play list because who wouldn’t want to avoid a man that just walks away when responsibility with love comes a knocking.

Fast forward to so-called adulthood, Alanis Morrisette’s song You Oughta Know, soothed my wounded soul in my 20’s. It was as if this was the song that I could sing to every guy who I felt screwed me over. If I could have left a voicemail with her words in the song, that would have been the ultimate. Admittedly, Alanis Morisette’s music helped get me through my twenties.

As my life has mellowed out over the years, dating less, and hoping for less from men and from love, merely from many letdowns and not letting myself get my hopes too high anymore, I have now matured into more musical tastes that resign love and Valentines Day to a mere “maybe it exists somewhere”. This mellowness makes me feel like somewhat of a Tina Turner singing What’s Love Got to Do With It and Katy Perry’s song Wide Awake, which to me signifies a more mature way to look at love and to avoid falling in love with the wrong person. We have the ability to in essence choose more viable candidates to give our hearts to, ones that deserve it and won’t carelessly break them. It begs the question if we can actually control who we fall in love with. I don’t think that is the case, but I do think we can control who we allow ourselves to engage with, essentially giving them keys to our hearts. It’s a nice feeling to not need to be in love to be happy and in fact be willing to wait for a love that might last forever.

It is fun to reminisce on the expansion of my musical tastes over the decades, for when I first though I could feel any love for the opposite sex must have been when I was in middle school and had the biggest crush on a boy basketball player at my school. I played basketball for the girls team. His name was Randal and his girlfriend was a cute cheerleader. It seems I have a history of liking boys who have cute cheerleader girlfriends. However in my 8th grade year at a school dance, he did ask me to dance to a song that I absolutely love. The song will be nameless, because it definitely does not go on the Anti-Valentines playlist, it’s a love song for the ages no doubt. Although that dance didn’t get me a love match with him either. Now, you may be thinking why I brought up this little example of childhood crushing on the basketball courts, but that leads me into an oldie but goodie favored song of mine from Mariah Carey called Someday. The official video for this song, we see a little girl eyeing on cute basketball boy all while singing that “Someday, ooh someday, the one you gave away will be the only one you’re wishing for, Someday hey hey, Boy you’re gonna pay cause baby I’m the one who’s keeping score”. This is a cute song to me because it’s fun to daydream about past potential loves that passed me up only to wish that today they would be what I was wanting, and isn’t that the best revenge for all of us in unrequited love?!

Always loving the music of Sarah McLachlan since I first heard her voice and music in college, I have to go with her song Stupid, for being on the list. It’s not everyday that a song has the exact words we tell ourselves for falling in love with someone who just wrecks us by deceiving us with their duplicitous ways. The music video is enchanting being set back in the days of the all romantic periods where women were supposed to be all proper and subservient to men. I have left several men I thought I feelings for asking myself “How stupid could I be? A simpleton could see that you’re no good for me.”

Now nothing makes you not want to get involved in love and be extra careful while you listen to the miraculous voice of Whitney Houston singing I Learned From the Best. It’s a song I adore, for it’s about a woman singing to a man about how she learned to make him cry just like he made her cry. For we learn how to break hearts by those who break our hearts. To me, it’s a classic, and of course it would be, because Whitney sings it!

I have to admit I love the early songs from Justin Timberlake career, in which he must have been getting back at Brittney’s supposed betrayal. The two songs that are my go to songs about someone done someone wrong songs are Cry Me A River and What Goes Around…Comes Around. I can hear the tunes in my head now as I type the titles. His style of music extends to my love of R and B music as well and the song by Cee Lo Green titled Forget You. It is simply a fantastic song to bee bop around to, all while imagining that the people who simply do not love us for us, but for what we have in our pocketbooks, should be people we should avoid and forget. The line, “I guess, he’s an X-box and I’m more of an Atari” is a classic play on video games. I also love that several years later Gwyneth Paltrow sang the girl version of this song in the hit show Glee, is just as awesome, and depicts that it is not just one gender that “loves” for the wrong reasons of lust of money.

Now back to my Country roots, I am wholeheartedly simpatico with the music of Taylor Swift. She sings the music of my heart and it just always seems to fit most situations, for the song Picture to Burn is a good one to imagine burning pictures of an old love which turned out to be definitely anything but love and oh so Anti-Valentines. Add the two songs You Belong With Me and Teardrops on My Guitar, and the Country playlist is rounded out from old to newish stars.

Despite having an Anti-Valentines Day song playlist always at my ready, I do love all kinds of songs and secretly have a playlist for the just in case love happens to me moment. For what kind of music and lyric lover would I be without loving a variety of songs. I feel like I need to end this on a positive note, just to put out in the universe, that I am open to love, if a miracle was to happen. With that being said, the song Looking For Love by Johnny Lee, highlights how my life seems to have been one where I have been looking for love in all the wrong places. Just like Johnny Lee sings “Now that I found a friend and a lover, God bless the day I discovered you”, I do think that’s what we all long for deep down, despite our long lists of anti-love songs! Even though I wrote this playlist, I will gladly abandon it for the Valentine’s Day where I actually do have a true love and it warrants another playlist. After all, life is a mystery, and we should have playlists for all kinds of situations and scenarios!