NO REASON

Love. About 95% of all songs ever written are based on love. The percentage might even be higher than that. Love, or some response to it…or the loss of it…or the absence of it…or the betrayal of it. Sadly, the word “love” itself is a bugger to rhyme. It works with dove, or glove, or above…but really, how conversational is it to end a sentence with any of those words? So we songwriters are left to find other words for love.

When you’re a writer you listen to songs sort of the same way an architect looks at buildings or a chef eats a meal. Not that I’m always analyzing songs. But if I really like a tune I find myself pondering the structure and the patterns and the word usage, as well as how the music fits in all of it. So through the years I have studied popular love songs, especially in the country/folk genre, and here’s what I discovered:

Most love songs either spill out emotions or rattle off reasons why someone loves someone else. They feel warm and fuzzy and they work. But I started wondering if the love I wanted, and the love I had, fit all that. I mean, this wasn’t always going to work for us:

I can feel the magic floating in the air

Being with you gets me that way

I watch the sunlight dance across your face and I've

Never been this swept away

                                       “Breathe”

OR –

I'm sold on the lady in the second row

She's an eight, she's a nine, she's a ten I know

She's got ruby red lips, blonde hair, blue eyes,

and I'm about to bid my heart good-bye.

                                         “Sold”

Things change. We change. I concluded that if you were to love someone for physical reasons, or even other reasons, then when the looks change…

...when the wallet gets a little thinner…

...when the hair goes gray or falls out,...

...or when Alzheimer’s takes away that intellectual brilliance…

...you run the risk of losing that love.

So I wrote this song:

Go To FileFactory.com

              NO REASON

I.

Some speak of love and all that it costs

How it’s tenderly won and painfully lost

Hundreds of reasons for loving, for leaving

Are written in songs every day

But I don’t see love in that way

PRECHORUS: Cuz once you need reasons for loving

Then you could find reasons to go

So when you ask why I love you

Here’s what I want you to know

CHORUS: I’m yours in the sweet, in the bitter

I’m yours if you soar, if you fall

Love keeps no account of the winners

Ask why I love you, I’ll tell you

There’s NO REASON at all

II.

After all of these years I’m still crazy in love

And if you want reasons there’s more than enough

But time’s going to change them, and life rearrange them

But one thing will always be true

That’s the way my soul rises to you

REPEAT CHORUS

My family is surrounded by people who are full of kindness and love.  They evidence love in all sorts of ways.  And we also try to show them that we love them.  Sometimes people will say, "Hey, I owe ya"  after I've done something love-based for them.  Those who know me well have heard me respond, "Love keeps no account."  By that I mean Love...true and unfettered love...does not keep an accounting of balances.  We do what we do  not because it makes us look good, or because we might get something back, or for some benefit in the future. Pure love, true heaven-sent love, has no reasons.