Love Songs

Sentimental love songs only seem to make sense when you’re in love. Otherwise, they’re just vacant clichés that we barely even register.

In François Truffaut’s The Woman Next Door (1981), the lovelorn Mathilde says of sentimental songs, ‘the dumber they are, the truer they are’:

Similarly, in Annie Ernaux’s short autobiographical novel Simple Passion, she writes that their simplicity legitimized her own experience:

Throughout this period, I didn’t once listen to any classical music; I preferred songs. Sentimental songs, which previously I had ignored, moved me deeply. In a simple, straightforward manner, they spoke of the absolute, universal nature of passion. When I heard Sylvie Vartan sing, “c’est fatal, animal,” I knew I wasn’t the only woman to feel that way. Songs accompanied and legitimized my own experience