{"id":90106,"date":"2015-09-23T18:16:08","date_gmt":"2015-09-23T22:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=90106"},"modified":"2015-09-23T18:16:08","modified_gmt":"2015-09-23T22:16:08","slug":"silly-love-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/23\/silly-love-songs\/","title":{"rendered":"Silly Love Songs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Man. Car. Love.<\/p><\/div>\n

I was asked recently to write about my favorite love song, and I debated what to say. It wasn\u2019t that I didn\u2019t know which song to pick. I did. But I knew it was a weird choice.<\/p>\n

There are many songs that are almost too painfully emotive to listen to. We all have them. Some\u2014\u201cExotic Arcade\u201d or \u201cNight and Day\u201d for me, or \u201cTo Here Knows When\u201d or \u201cNaomi\u201d\u2014are too bittersweet. Others are simply too tied up with being young, like \u201cBlack Car\u201d or \u201cFrenesi\u201d or \u201cAutumn Sweater.\u201d In some cases, it\u2019s pretty obvious why a song carries bad associations: after one breakup, all I did was lie on the floor and play \u201cWalk a Thin Line\u201d on a loop, forever. One that\u00a0almost<\/em>\u00a0brings me to tears with its sheer, surprising beauty is \u201cThe Love of the Princess,\u201d the romance theme from\u00a0The Thief of Baghdad<\/em>. All these are some of the best love songs I know.\u00a0But the one song that reliably makes me cry, every single time I hear it, is \u201cLittle Deuce Coupe.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a great song: Brian Wilson said it was the favorite of the Beach Boys\u2019 car oeuvre, and Frank Zappa praised its \u201cprogression V-II.\u201d But that\u2019s not why I love it so much. Rather, I consider \u201cLittle Deuce Coupe\u201d to be the purest love song about a boy and his car ever written, and as such the purest love song ever written.<\/p>\n

Now, I don\u2019t care about Ford Model B\u2019s. I don\u2019t care about the flat head mill or the pink slip or the\u00a0competition clutch with the four on the floor. I don\u2019t really know what any of that means\u2014hell, I can\u2019t even drive\u2014although obviously 140 miles per hour is fast and I guess really useful for drag-racing circumstances, when some loud braggart tries to put you down and your girl has to look in your eyes and tell you everything will work out all right.<\/p>\n

And of course I recognize on some level that\u00a0Pet Sounds<\/em>\u00a0is the better album, and that \u201cGod Only Knows\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t Worry Baby\u201d are two of the most beautiful love songs ever written. But even they can\u2019t touch me like \u201cLittle Deuce Coupe.\u201d Is it crass and consumerist? Of course. Was it all a part of the cynical sun-and-fun PR machine that my dad still bitterly blames for luring him to Pomona? Sure. Was the fragile young Brian Wilson being browbeaten and bullied by his tyrannical father during the recording of\u00a0Surfer Girl<\/em>? Obviously! And that\u2019s leaving aside a lot of things you could say about male aggression and the glorification of competition and danger, to say nothing of penis substitutes. I mean, to some degree all this goes without saying.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But we know love when we hear it, and the love in \u201cDeuce Coupe\u201d is a love that will never, ever die\u2014a love that\u2019s both fresh and based on care and hoping and probably saving up and restoring, too. Maybe a song about a horse, or a dog, could approach the power, but to my mind nothing has. Brian Wilson said in the notes to\u00a0Surfer Girl<\/em>\u2019s reissue, \u201cWe loved doing \u2018Little Deuce Coupe\u2019. It was a good \u2018shuffle\u2019 rhythm, which was not like most of the rhythms of the records on the radio in those days. It had a bouncy feel to it. Like most of our records, it had a competitive lyric. This record was my favorite Beach Boys car song.\u201d It has all the joy and pain of youth, but none of the associations. Just pure sweetness.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve listened to the song twice to write this\u2014and so I\u2019ve cried twice, too. You don\u2019t know what I got.<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of <\/em>The Paris Review, and the <\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was asked recently to write about my favorite love song, and I debated what to say. It wasn\u2019t that I didn\u2019t know which song to pick. I did. But I knew it was a weird choice. There are many songs that are almost too painfully emotive to listen to. We all have them. Some\u2014\u201cExotic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[19519,10484,19522,16743,12526,19521,17993,19520,19523,2741,13105],"class_list":["post-90106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-brian-wilson","tag-cars","tag-consumerism","tag-crying","tag-driving","tag-little-deuce-coupe","tag-love-songs","tag-pet-sounds","tag-pink-slips","tag-racing","tag-the-beach-boys"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOn \u201cLittle Deuce Coupe\u201d and the Joys of Unlikely Love Songs<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sadie Stein on her favorite love song\u2014one about a man and his car.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2015\/09\/23\/silly-love-songs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Silly Love Songs by Sadie Stein\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"September 23, 2015 \u2013 I was asked recently to write about my favorite love song, and I debated what to say. 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