A Lighter View
Food of love
By K.E.H. Stagg

February 10, 2011

_____“If music be the food of love,” it’s no wonder romance is dead! I’m sure Billy S., who penned the famous line—admittedly, with a different ending—would heartily agree. Anyone trapped at a traffic signal in Dillsburg with a vehicle in the next lane thumping in time to the bass knows exactly what I’m talking about. It goes against the grain for me to categorize such pieces as music; it would be more accurate to call them” rhyming to an unrelenting beat”. And if these musicians were forbidden the use of expletives, their “songs” would have about four words: “You . . . cry. . . me. . . die.”
_____But it’s not just the wannsa-be gangsta rappers whose lyrics resemble graffiti on the stalls of a public restroom. Now, even mainstream singers boast expletives in their song titles with liberal doses sprinkled throughout the entire piece. One of these days, the Grammy Awards will be taken off the air—except on pay-per-view—because they’ll be non-stop “bleep”-ing by censors, eliminating all the graphic swear words.
_____I have a hard time envisioning any couple requesting ****in’ Perfect for their first dance as a married couple, or a proud mother telling the kiddies in later years, “Turn up the volume! S&M is Daddy’s and my song.” But I admit to the possibility that I’m wrong. Maybe there’s a whole generation who, instead of cozying up to lyrics like, “I’m everything I am because you loved me,” are, instead, embracing to, “You’re so upset because I’m making out with all your friends. . .” Well, duh! It’s hard to imagine that scenario turning out well for anyone.
_____In all fairness, previous generations have produced not necessarily vulgar songs, but certainly just plain stupid ones. “Hot-diggity, dog-diggity, Boom! What you do to me,” comes to mind. It’s mind-boggling to think anyone ever requested “Take a chance, take a chance, take a ch-ch-,chance-chance,” but no doubt somebody somewhere (probably in Australia) did. And although Peter, Paul, and Mary were among the few musicians of their day who repeatedly denounced the practice of inhaling, injecting, or ingesting illegal substances, “Shule, shule, shule-a-roo,” is probably meaningful only to those did so during that time period.
_____Come to think of it, couples’ romantic nicknames are often food-related: cupcake, honeybun, sweetie, baby cakes, sugar plum, pumpkin. So maybe the food of love isn’t music after all. Maybe the food of love is. . . food.