Fine romance

In 2019 the journal Psychology of Music published a study that had examined songs that made the Billboard Top 40 from 1960 to 2010. The aim of the study was to see what the songs were about, as a window into what occupied the popular culture mind of the times. Sex and sexual desire appeared more frequently as the decades progressed, jumping from showing up in 18 per cent of songs in 1960 to 42 per cent in 2010. Drugs and wealth also became more prominent themes featuring in around 23 per cent of songs by the end of the noughties. There was one topic though that remained a consistent focus and far outweighed any other idea in popular music. That topic was romantic love, and it graced no less than 65 per cent of popular music across the decades.

This lyrical prominence is not just an indication of what songwriters are obsessed with; it arises from the music industry’s knowledge that romantic love is what the public want to hear about. It also reflects that, in the Western world at least, romantic love has replaced religion as a means of satisfying the needs of the soul.

The 21st century ideal of romantic love is not new; it arose out of the courtly love sung