by Matt Barr

Libertarian love songs

Catchy post title! This is really musical accompaniment to the Valentine's Day edition of the Carnival of Liberty, which this blog is hosting today. It's a playlist of songs that celebrate love and the emancipating power of same. Liberty is the measure of how free we are to love, and we love best when we're most free. These songs start (whether they realize it or not) with that premise.

No "you're my destiny," no "I can't help myself," no "love conquers all," no "you drove me to that five-state killing spree" -- these songs are about people who want to be free to love, want the object of their affection to be free to love back, and are prepared to exercise the most difficult and sometimes controversial right we have: the right to subordinate ourselves to something we believe in. (So, see, it's not really libertarian, in the modern American sense, since you're not the boss of me! is the central tenet of same.) And in at least one case, the right not to.

While I'll be delighted if you'll suggest other or especially better tunes in the comments, this is not intended to be some definitive playlist. They're my favorite songs that fit the theme from my collection. So please don't get all shouty about how I could be such a maroon as to not include [My Favorite Song] in this post.

Here's the musical accompaniment part: These songs also appear on the radio.blog on the right side of my home page (below the ad and the handsome picture), so listen along -- detach the player by clicking 'Pop-Up' at the bottom and you can keep listening as you click the Carnival links and once you navigate away from this site. Use of the 'Crossfader' is recommended, too. Here's what you'll hear, and why:

Walk This World, Heather Nova

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The opener to Nova's seminal 1994 album Oyster dips toward lit class angsty poetry in its lyrics but has undeniable power. Atop its (barely) pent-up horniness is the desire to be free:

And I’m sucked in by the wonder and I’m fucked up by the lies
And I dig a hole to lie in and I build some wings to fly
And I think that I could love you 'cause you know how to be free
I want you to come walk this world with me.

As well as to explore, encounter and deal with the world together -- she's not asking to carry or be carried, she wants you to walk with her. And come. That, too.

Human Touch, Bruce Springsteen

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Not the Boss' most beloved tune, but a story of a struggle to meet, let's face it, low expectations -- which is really what most of us reading or writing this try to do on a daily basis. There's no idealism, in fact our narrator wants to disabuse anyone of the notion that the hopefully soon to be lovers are anything but as normal as it gets.

Girl, ain't no kindness in the face of strangers
Ain't gonna find no miracles here
Well you can wait on your blessings but darlin'
I got a deal for you right here

I ain't lookin' for praise or pity
I ain't comin' 'round searchin' for a crutch
I just want someone to talk to

(The most strident antiwar libertarians should skip over the part where that feeling of safety comes at a hard price.)

Steal Your Love, Lucinda Williams

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As disillusioned as Williams has become over the last couple albums, she might seem an odd choice for any Valentine's Day playlist. This sweet number from 2001's Essence sees our singer wistfully scheming to win someone over. Eventually she figures she doesn't need trickery or to bend the rules:

Give me your strong hand, go away with me,
I won't have to steal your love.
Come on, let me kiss you and set you free,
I won't have to steal your love.

Closer To You, Brandi Carlile

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You do a double take when you hear Brandi Carlile sing, if you've seen her, since she looks about 16 (she's 23) but has the voice of God herself. In this number from her eponymous debut album, half a couple is traveling and wishing it was tomorrow, when she'll be with the other half. Her desire to be reunited is overpowering, to the point where she would ignore a couple miracles in her single-mindedness:

Someday we might learn to tell the truth
We might even find the fountains of our youth
We all needed something real we all need proof
I just want to be closer to you

Birds don't suddenly appear every time the guy is near, and while our narrator realizes that having her "dreams come true" doesn't stack up to being together, we don't get an idealized picture of love, either. We have a distracting, powerful longing to be together -- for its own sake, not to solve all the world's problems.

Magicians, Amy Rigby

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Someone who could write songs like Amy Rigby and sing them like Brandi Carlile would become extremely rich. Magicians departs from most of the songs here in that our narrator wants her beau to quit being so cynical and realistic, but that's why I wanted to include it: Celebrating individuality and freedom in love isn't the same as dragging the concept down.

We're really something when we take off our clothes
I wish that we could stay this way
It's not a healthy way to live, I suppose
At least that's what I was raised to say
You tell me life is just unfair
But I can hear that anywhere

Let's leave reality out of this shall we

She counsels "suspend[ing] belief" -- accepting love can mean drowning out everything that says it's not possible. On Valentine's Day, let's practice!

All That Matters, Mark Knopfler

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If anywhere, these next couple/three songs is where we lose the true blue American libertarians. Knopfler's gorgeous paean to daughters, sons and "friends" (spouses, if you're married) appears on 2004's Shangri-La, but the version on the radio.blog is live from his 2005 tour stop in Nashville. Ninety five percent of love songs, even (or especially) about family, promise that the narrator would do anything, take a bullet, make the bad guys go away, protect his loved ones from evil. All That Matters is different in its frank admission:

Well, I can't stop the pain
When it calls
I'm a man
And I can't stop the rain
When it falls, my darling
Who can?

You're My Home, Billy Joel

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Billy Joel has written some of the best pop/soft rock love songs ever (just not recently), but for my money his best is the obscure You're My Home, an ode to a lover with whom the singer feels at home -- literally.

If I travel all my life
And I never get to stop and settle down
Long as I have you by my side
There's a roof above and good walls all around
You're my castle, you're my cabin and my instant pleasure dome
I need you in my house 'cause you're my home

This love-as-anchor theme rarely survives the temptation to slip into "I'd be lost without you" or "together we're gods who make miracles happen and solve world hunger." You're My Home is a satisfying, reality-based (!) piece of work that committed couples intuitively understand.

If You Were the Woman and I Was the Man, Cowboy Junkies

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This was supposed to be my and my Valentine's wedding song, but we eloped. It's still the best dialogue between two people exploring what it really means to be in love and trying to get a handle on what this other person they're committing to is up to, set in a semi-playful what-if theme:

If I was the woman and you were the man
would I laugh if you came to me
with your heart in your hand
and said, 'I offer you this freely
and will give you all that I can
because you are the woman
and I am the man?'

Hopefully, the answer is "no."

She's Too Good For Me, Warren Zevon

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Speaking of my Valentine, she got me Zevon's new Reconsider Me: The Love Songs CD for Valentine's Day. I wanted to get a song from there onto this list, and happily, the wrenching She's Too Good For Me is perfect for the theme. Originally appearing on 2003's The Wind, the album Zevon wrote, produced and recorded while dying, it's a goodbye to someone our narrator has split with previously, but with the finality comes enviable clarity.

I want her to be happy
I want her to be free
I want her to be everything she couldn't be with me

I'd wait here for a thousand years if she'd come back to me
I have everything she wants but nothing that she needs

Backing vocals, in case it's bugging you, by Don Henley and Timothy B. Schmit.

Could You Be Loved, Bob Marley

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From 1980's unfortunate swan song Uprising, Could You Be Loved could be an anthem for aspiring to be worthy of love. In the midst of travail and injustice, it's still important to be responsible for yourself:

The road of life is rocky
And you may stumble too
So while you point your fingers
Someone else is judging you
Love you brother man

Most modern songs treat being loved as a birthright, and subscribe to the belief everyone is loved by somebody. To whatever extent that's true, we still owe everyone our best effort to deserve it.

Dover Beach, Bangles

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Possibly my favorite band, definitely underrated, certainly capable of a sphincter-scrunching combination of great songwriting, rocking and harmonies, the Bangles' reputation as musicians should have been only dulled, not snuffed out, by such atrocities as Walk Like an Egyptian. Evoking late 19th and early 20th century romantic poetry, Dover Beach brings us back to one of the same themes as Magicians: In love, it's not only acceptable but desirable to share the wish that you could shuck it all. Knowing you'd do it if you could usually has to be enough, though.

The day you looked at me
And it was on your mind
The world is no one's dream
We will never ever find the time, oh

If we had the time
I would run away with you
To a perfect world

Waltz (Better Than Fine), Fiona Apple

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Finally, we need a song specially for the unaccompanied on Valentine's Day. If Fiona Apple couldn't get a date for the Grammys looking like this, no one who's between boyfriends or girlfriends has anything to complain about. Waltz, which concludes her desert island disc Extraordinary Machine, is Apple's breezy it's-ok-to-do-your-own-thing manifesto, wrapped in sweet 3/4 time piano and lilting organ.

If you don't have a date
Celebrate
Go out and sit on the lawn
And do nothing
'Cause it's just what you must do
Nobody does it anymore

So do it!

What? No Closer To the Heart? What's the name of your blog again? I considered Closer To the Heart by Rush a lovely and poignant love song when I was 16, and it's certainly got an individualist, equal-partnership thing going. You should go listen to your copy if you have one, which you do if you're complaining about its absence from this list.

Happy libertarian Valentine's Day!

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