It must have been love… Sentimental love songs

I sometimes argue with my wife. We recently celebrated twenty-four years together. But we sometimes argue. I guess you can say “fight.” We don’t fight a lot, but when we do, there is this distance that can feel very serious. You forget the love. You go to bed angry. You wake up in the middle of the night angry. I do, even though I easily reconcile. The good thing is that — at least in my experience — the fights are forgettable. Reconciliation and good moments outweigh the crises.

Is it possible to carry a loving relationship forever? I’m committed but, like I said, there are sometimes hard moments that can’t be sugar-coated.

This note is about music. Recently I realized that some of the best songs are sentimental songs that reminisce about the love that was, or the love that’s fleeting. I’m not talking about the songs that are full of pain — like U2’s One or With or Without You or Sinead Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U — or pure love songs (say Whitney Houston’s I Will Always Love You). I specifically mean mellow and sentimental songs about past love.

This one from the 1980s is pure, perfect pop music — It Must Have Been Love by Roxette