Why so sad?

on Mar 20, 2013
Despite it's name, it turns out that Beach House's "Wedding Bell" would not be a particularly appropriate tune to play at, you know, a wedding. I came by this little nugget of insight a few weeks ago, near the beginning of my (still ongoing) quest to put together some songs to be played at my own wedding.

It started out well enough, pretty instrumental for a processional, check. Background-y reception dinner time stuff, check. Crowd pleasing stuff to get people dancing, check. Selections to be played after the parents and relatives retire for the night, check.

The trouble came when my fiance and I decided that, yes, we would do the whole first dance thing. "Great" I thought, "a chance to pick more songs!" I was so confident that we'd have a hard time narrowing down our choices, I convinced my very patient betrothed to conduct a March Madness style song elimination bracket to choose a winner from among the pool... and that's how I found myself searching for "Wedding" in my iTunes library as a place to start.

I was initially hopeful when I saw "Wedding Bell" bubble up in my search results. We both like Beach House quite a bit, and upon first inspection it seems like it'd be nice to dance to. Then I listened to the lyrics. Turns out this song has a little bridge where Victoria Legrand sings:

I
Enjoy 
Nothing
Ahhh

Whelp, that won't do. 

This little pattern repeated itself over and over: Think of a song we'd both like, put song on list, get excited, listen to song, realize lyrics are sad and/or full of f-bombs, cross song off list. Now I know why people phone this stuff in.

As I eliminated song after song, album after album, and band after band from consideration, I realized that I just didn't have much to choose from amongst my personal library. At some point, I started to wonder whether this was a personal problem. Is it that I have always disliked love songs but wasn't conscious of the fact until, at 33, I really needed one?

Then, I tuned on the bands. I mean, come on you guys. Shouldn't Songs of Faith and Devotion have one song that's just about, you know, that? Look. We'd dance to The National. We'd dance to Iron & Wine. We'd dance to Modest Mouse! All we needed was one good song about how one person loves some other person AND other person loves them back AND other person is not dead, with someone else, in prison, a zombie, etc.

Oh, Robert Smith definitely gets a point for "Lovesong", which he wrote  as a wedding present for his future wife and is great, it is way too upbeat to be considered first dance material.

How about this. If not a love song, how about just something generally happy that I can slow dance to with my bride? Great, expand the scope. Let's see... nope, not many songs to commemorate my marriage to here either. Like, hey Animal Collective! I hate single you guys out, but by now shouldn't you have accidentally written a song that meets that criteria?

Oh well, It's not all bad news. While the 64 song tournament was quickly cut to 32, then scrapped altogether, we did both eventually find a few good choices, and picked a clear favorite that we're both thrilled with. Once we get hitched in June, I'll reveal the winner, and discuss a few songs that didn't quite make the cut.