{"id":20534,"date":"2010-09-10T08:22:04","date_gmt":"2010-09-10T12:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=20534"},"modified":"2011-05-31T12:39:00","modified_gmt":"2011-05-31T16:39:00","slug":"silly-love-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2010\/09\/silly-love-songs\/","title":{"rendered":"Silly Love Songs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"<p>Silly<\/a>
Professor Ross Buck says love songs help us explore our inner emotions.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

They\u2019ve dominated the popular music charts for decades \u2013 those soulful, sometimes playful, ditties about love, affection, and heartbreak that have just the right catchy melody to keep you humming the song hours, if not days, later.<\/p>\n

You know the ones. Tony Orlando & Dawn\u2019s \u201cKnock Three Times<\/a>;\u201d \u201cStill the One<\/a>,\u201d by Orleans; Ruport Holmes\u2019 \u201cEscape (the Pina Colada Song)<\/a>.\u201d Good and bad. (Think Captain & Tennille\u2019s \u201cLove Will Keep Us Together<\/a>.\u201d) Painful and bittersweet. (Think Eric Carmen\u2019s \u201cAll By Myself<\/a>.\u201d) The list goes \u201cOn and On<\/a>\u201d \u2013 which just happens to be another<\/em> love song that made Stephen Bishop a lot of money in the late 1970\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Paul McCartney immortalized the genre with his own popular classic \u201cSilly Love Songs<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But why do we find these songs so appealing?<\/p>\n

Ross Buck, a UConn professor of communication sciences and psychology in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, has a theory. He believes the popularity of love songs goes far beyond the lyrics and notes of a particular tune. Love songs resonate at a deeper level within us, he suggests. They allow us to explore and learn about our inner emotions in a safe and structured way. And that, he says, can be a good thing.<\/p>\n

Buck calls it \u201cemotional education,\u201d and he says media, including love songs silly or otherwise, play an important part.<\/p>\n

When we explore things in the physical world Buck says, we rely on social feedback from others to discern what something is and what it isn\u2019t, what behavior is socially acceptable and what is not. That is not true with our emotions, Buck says. Deep inner emotions \u2013 like love, desire, rejection, or bereavement \u2013 can be difficult to share directly with others; and the direct expression of such feelings can be, at times, inappropriate or embarrassing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a difference in that we can both agree that the box over there is blue for example and we have equal access to the \u2018blueness\u2019 of the box,\u201d Buck says. \u201cBut we don\u2019t have equal access to emotions and feelings. I know how I feel, but I don\u2019t know how you feel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"<p>Silly<\/a>
Buck says love songs play an important part in 'emotional education.'<\/figcaption><\/figure>Love songs, Buck says, help us understand and deal with our emotions and feelings associated with attachment and bonding, and also rejection and loss.<\/p>\n

\u201cJust as we learn about dealing with angry or sexual feelings using media, we also learn how to deal with loving and caring feelings,\u201d says Buck. \u201cWe learn about losing love, unrequited love \u2013 the whole gamut of relationships is explored through different kinds of silly love songs \u2026. You\u2019re connecting with your feelings but you\u2019re not exposing yourself, you\u2019re not really doing<\/em> anything. It\u2019s all in your head.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the 1980\u2019s, Buck and his students explored emotional education by recording individuals\u2019 responses to a series of music videos. Four of the videos were silly love songs: Lionel Ritchie\u2019s \u201cAll Night Long<\/a>,\u201d the Eric Martin Band\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Stop<\/a>,\u201d Linda Ronstadt\u2019s \u201cWhat\u2019s New<\/a>,\u201d and ZZ Top\u2019s \u201cSharp Dressed Man<\/a>.\u201d The videos had clear appeal to the study participants. With a much darker video, the Rolling Stones\u2019 \u201cUnder Cover of the Night<\/a>,\u201d liking was correlated with ratings of power among some participants. Liking an anti-war video, \u201cFields of Fire<\/a>\u201d by Big Country, was correlated with feelings of sadness, fear, and anger. Some individuals, particularly males, enjoyed the video because <\/em>it made them sad, angry, and afraid.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is fascinating to me, this feeling of negative emotion and liking it,\u201d Buck says. \u201cIt\u2019s why, I think, people go to horror movies or sad movies like Titanic \u2013<\/em> they want to explore their feelings of fear and uncertainty and all that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Exploring and communicating is the key to emotional education, says Buck who has written extensively on the subject and continues the discussion in his periodic blog, Spontaneous Emotion<\/a>, in Psychology Today<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Buck explains the importance this way: Imagine a little boy playing with blocks gets frustrated and throws a block. His parent tells him that he is frustrated and angry, that he shouldn\u2019t throw blocks, and that he should go to his room and relax for a while. Now the boy knows this feeling he is feeling. The parent has given it a label and taught him how to deal with it, Buck says.<\/p>\n

Now imagine that it is a little girl playing with blocks who gets frustrated and throws a block. Only this time, her parent scolds her for being a “bad girl” for throwing the block, but does not take the time to explain frustration to her and how she should handle it. The girl, Buck says, may not develop the same ability to label that particular feeling as the boy and that may cause problems down the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very important that we learn to actually label our feelings and desires and not suppress them, but accurately show them, like anger for example,\u201d says Buck, \u201cand that we learn to do it in an appropriate way.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s nothing silly about that.<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n

Still on the subject<\/strong> \u2013 here is a short list of some of the more creative love and break-up songs to be found on the Internet:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. You\u2019re the Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly<\/li>\n
  2. I Keep Forgettin\u2019 I Forgot About You<\/li>\n
  3. I Still Miss You Baby, But My Aim\u2019s Gettin\u2019 Better<\/li>\n
  4. I\u2019m So Miserable Without You, It\u2019s like Having You Here<\/li>\n
  5. If You Want to Keep Your Beer Ice Cold (Set it Next to my Ex-Wife\u2019s Heart)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And there are also these memorable classics:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Breaking Up is Hard To Do (Neil Sedaka)<\/li>\n
    2. Usta Be My Girl (O\u2019Jays)<\/li>\n
    3. Ain\u2019t No Sunshine (Bill Withers)<\/li>\n
    4. Hurt So Bad (Linda Ronstadt)<\/li>\n
    5. 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover (Paul Simon)<\/li>\n
    6. These Boots Are Made for Walking (Nancy Sinatra)<\/li>\n
    7. She\u2019s Gone (Hall and Oates)<\/li>\n
    8. Love Stinks (J. Geils Band)<\/li>\n
    9. Mr. Lonely (Bobby Vinton)<\/li>\n
    10. Yesterday (the Beatles)<\/li>\n
    11. Heartbreak Hotel (Elvis Presley)<\/li>\n
    12. I\u2019m Not in Love (10cc)<\/li>\n
    13. It\u2019s Too Late (Carole King)<\/li>\n
    14. It\u2019s All Over Now (Rolling Stones)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Professor Ross Buck says love songs help us explore our inner emotions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[44],"class_list":["post-20534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 10:19:54","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20534"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20534\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36854,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20534\/revisions\/36854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20534"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=20534"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=20534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}