February 14 – better known as Valentines Day – will soon be upon us. Ads for chocolates, flowers, wine, and romantic destinations fill the media. You might say that love is in the air.
With music being the language of romance, it is not surprising that Spotify has numerous playlists devoted to songs appropriate to the holiday. As Paul McCartney once observed, “You’d think that people would’ve had enough of silly love songs but I look around me and I see it isn’t so… And what’s wrong with that? I’d like to know.”
And so in this week leading up to Valentine’s Day we are going to look at some love songs from the sixties. Why that decade? Why not?
We start with a song written by the aforementioned Paul McCartney in the early days of the Beatles. Of course the Beatles recorded many love songs throughout their run and especially in their early years. “And I Love Her,” “I Need You,” “In My Life,” and “If I Fell” are just a few from their catalog.
An often overlooked and underrated gem is “Things We Said Today” from the album and movie A Hard Day’s Night. It was also released as the B-side of the “Hard Day’s Night” single. The song has a depth and maturity that belies McCartney’s age – 22 – at the time.
The minor chord structure, switching to major chords in the bridge, gives the song a dreamy yet haunting feel. “Things We Said Today” starts in the present but quickly segues to future time when the couple reminisce about the things they are now saying. “Someday when we’re dreaming, deep in love not a lot to say, then we will remember things we said today” exhibits what McCartney would later refer to as future nostalgia. It is a theme he would revisit in “When I’m Sixty-Four.”
There is also an innocent quality to “Things We Said Today,” something inherent in young love. “Love me all the time, girl. We’ll go on and on.” These are not the lines of someone who has suffered great disappointment in love. Or perhaps he is still in the euphoric stage of falling in love.
Interesting side note: We are never told just what they “said today.” We can guess, of course. It is a love song, after all, and so we can imagine the three little words they must have shared.
Why does this song matter? It has a timeless quality to it that makes it as much at home today as it was in 1964.
