'It's just part of our rhythm': Minnesota artists on why people keep on writing love songs
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By Natalia Mendez and Darby Ottoson | The Current
Songs that explore the feeling of love — its thrills, spoils, and spills — are everywhere, and they have been around for thousands of years. Around Valentine’s Day, the topic reaches a fever pitch, but it is a fountain eternal. Humans can’t help falling in love, and sometimes they hate themselves for loving a specific fellow human. Either way, the songs keep pouring out.
There are literally songs about writing (or not writing) love songs, songs called “Love Song” and “Lovesong,” and songs bemoaning love songs. Aretha Franklin has “My Song,” Elton John put out “Your Song” and Taylor Swift’s got “Our Song.”
To eloquently delve into the creation of meaningful music about love, The Current asked the same questions to four Minnesota-based songwriters: Haley, Nur-D, Kiss the Tiger’s Meghan Kreidler, and Landon Conrath. Each one discussed their own writing and performance of such songs, and they shared appreciation for other masters of art.
These interviews were edited for length and clarity.
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Why do you write music about love (and/or the absence of it)?
Haley: That's what drives every form of art. It's something that we feel on a daily basis. Whether that's for your cat, your child, your neighbor, or the person you have a crush on at the post office, it's just part of our rhythm. And, going back to when our world was shut down, really recognizing how important it was to tell people that you love them. Because we were disconnected from each other, and the world shifted in that way. I want to believe that people are more open and better at conveying that to the people that they care about, and just being kinder and softer, and more vocal about their feelings. Because when you can't see people for years, you know, it changes the landscape of what that looks like. It's just intrinsic for me as a writer to write about all of the different shades of love, and, like you said, the absence of it and what that feels like.
Nur-D: This is probably the most cliche thing in the world to say, but love is one of the most powerful and wonderful things we have in this world. Everyone wants it, everyone is searching for it, and when they find it — even if it's just for a small time — they are never the same after. With music being one of the most incredible forms of expression we have, what else are we going to talk about? So often we use music to give voice to the indescribable and there are few things that give us those feelings, both positive and negative, like love. Whether you are in love, out of love, or not sure, nobody needs to have it explained to them. Love is the great connection we all share in some form or another, and so making music about it is tapping into that great big pool of common understanding.
Meghan Kreidler: Love is the center of everything. Writing songs about love is often about my resistance to it. It’s gone now, why did I take it for granted then? Why do we choose conflict over resolution? This tension is what makes writing songs about love so juicy and complex. There’s nothing straightforward about it. Love is a complicated thing.
Landon Conrath: Love, in general, is this emotion that's completely uncontrollable in a way that's all-encompassing. When you're either experiencing it or you're losing it, it’s all you can think about. I have such intense memories tied to music that's been with me through loss of love. Stereotypical, maybe, but still my answer is For Emma, Forever Ago. That record from Bon Iver, whenever I hear it, I have a really specific memory of being in my car crying and listening to that after a breakup in 2019. It's weird how the memories of love lost stick with you so much. It's one of the emotions that every human on planet Earth can relate to. Love is universal to the human experience — the absence of love, the pursuit of love, or the experience of it. That's why love songs are so popular — and also just powerful — because it's this thing that we all understand, but also don't understand. The mystery of it makes it enticing in songs. We all know it when we feel it. … When I sit down and try to get all those things out, it’s almost like a resetting of the emotions I was experiencing. And it's a way to navigate them.
What’s a lyric from your own work that has helped you celebrate the highs or process the lows of love?
Nur-D: "I don't mean to blaspheme my religion / but I've laid inside a paradise / and I don't think they wrote this down"
My song "Heaven In This Bed" is one of my favorite songs about love I have ever made. This line always makes me smile because it sort of talks about my relationship between love, sex, and growing up in a faith community that had a less-than-clear view of all of those things. The idea that in all the things people wrote down about the mystery of the universe, the afterlife, and anything else ... these people missed this incredible thing. That being with the one you love is so completely transcendent that it should have been written about in holy text seems pretty cool to me.
Meghan Kreidler: “I miss you and you miss me and / That’s just how it’s gonna be / On and on I’m all alone now / That’s just how it’s gonna be / I’m on fire / It’s nothing you need to worry about / Baby’s gone now / It’s something I need to live without”
This is a song about loss that I’ve found a lot of solace in because it’s about coming to terms with such immense pain. I believe our capacity to love is mirrored by our ability to experience our pain fully. The two cannot exist without the other.
Haley: 15-20 years of songs. Let's see. I can't really think past my newest record because that's just where my brain is at right now. The title track for my new record Hunca Munca has a pretty potent lyric, which I think about when I think in terms of deep love.
The first lyric of the song is: "I know you like the back of my hand / and once in a while I won't understand"
That's something that has come up for me with my adult relationships. You can know somebody really, really well. And you're still gonna have to work at it and not understand each other all of the time. That doesn't just extend to romantic relationships, but we have to be able to make ourselves vulnerable to love. And to deepen that love and connection with other people. Because we're all so very different, we function so differently. To be able to say, "I don't understand," and to have that received and explained in a way that is loving is really important. That's something I carry with me, too, as a mom. [On my 2018 instrumental album Pleasureland, there’s a song] I wrote for my daughter, called "Next Time (For C)." That was definitely a very potent love song to my child and to motherhood.
What is a song by someone else that you regularly return to that says something profound about love?
Meghan Kreidler: What first comes to mind is “The Mother” by Brandi Carlile. I don’t have kids of my own, but this song conveys everything I think I’d need to know about what it takes to have a child and how vulnerable it is to love something outside of yourself. It’s this pure and eye-opening love unlike any other.
Landon Conrath: “Pretty Pictures” by Indigo De Souza. It talks about this idea of being so in love with somebody, but knowing that the timing is bad. I think that's something I've really related to.
The chorus is literally like: "Breaking up and getting back together / Breaking up with someone you love / Cause you know it’s gonna be for the better / But it’s so hard to give it up"
That's something that, in that season of my life, I really related to. I'm a person that really likes to give love, and I give it away almost too easily. But sometimes it's not the right thing for that moment in your life, and it's so gut-wrenching to try and think about giving it up.
Haley: There's a million, a million billion. But I actually was thinking about "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell yesterday. That song just pops into my mind once in a while. I don't really listen to it all that often. But those lyrics just come up. That's a deeply profound love letter. It's just so beautiful. Like, "I could drink a case of you and still be on my feet." It kind of touches on a lot of that sad achiness of love.
“Just before love got lost you said / ‘I am as constant as a northern star’ / and I said “Constantly in the darkness / where is that at? / If you want me I'll be in the bar / On the back of a cartoon coaster / in the blue TV screen light / I drew a map of Canada / Oh, Canada / with your face sketched on it twice"
I love that part because also I'm from Canada. So beautiful, like write me a better lyric. I dare you. Oh my god, it's so gorgeous. Yeah, I love that.
Nur-D: Honestly, this is going to sound very weird, but "Molly" by Lil Dicky. It is a song about being in love but knowing that your life, your dreams, your hopes for tomorrow won't let you be the type of person or live the type of life that allows that love to happen. It's beautifully sad and it is not accusatory it's about taking responsibility for your heartbreak and something about is really touching to me
What happens to you — physically, mentally, or other — when you perform songs about matters of the heart?
Landon Conrath: I think it's always an emotional thing. You're singing from a place that you either are right now or you were once. I think that's why being a songwriter and being in a relationship can sometimes be weird, because you have to return to these places that weren't the best places. In order to tap into something that you want to express, you have to be there. It goes hand in hand with performing them, too. You want to give the audience that experience, and you want to put yourself in the shoes of the song. It can be kind of like a mind workout sometimes. I think I have a switch of “performance mode” and it kind of goes away after I'm off the stage, maybe. In general, being an artist and a songwriter is a weird thing because you have to go to these zones that maybe you almost shouldn't. Like, you make yourself depressed on purpose to write a good song.
Nur-D: It depends on the song. A lot of my music comes from my life, stories of places I've been, loves I have had and lost. I am happy with the happy songs and I am sad with the sad ones. I really try to let myself fall in love again, just for the moment, every time I perform a song. I do my best to let myself feel shattered by the hurt in the safest way possible while performing. I do it because I think that those moments in my life deserve to be felt.
Haley: To be honest with you, once I've written something, it's kind of like that potion goes into that. The lyrics and the melody and all of that kind of exist specifically for me and the creation process. So performing it, not to say I don't feel any feeling, but I just don't necessarily tap into that. Especially with songs I've been playing for years and years. Like, I go into that lyrical mode in my brain, and I sing it, play it, and then it's done. And I'm not left with any PTSD. It's interesting, though. The other night, I played at a house concert and I did a bunch of the new stuff. And when I got home, I was really tired, which is normal. I was really emotionally exhausted. And I was like, "Oh, I think I think those are pretty fresh." It's different for me to perform them and talk about the record, it's more of a processing for me, too, at this point, and that'll fade away. After 50 times it'll be like, whatever. But yeah, I don't think I have that big of a chemical reaction when I play love songs. Once in a while, some feelings will come up but yeah, it's pretty much like a job.
Meghan Kreidler: It opens me up physically. It’s like a plea or a confession that needs to come out, and the only way to really convey that appropriately is to add some stakes to what is being communicated. It can be vulnerable and empowering at the same time.
