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December 4, 2024 9 mins
Love songs are for everybody and so is this book. In We Found Love Song by Song, award-winning author and music journalist Annie Zaleski delivers a beautifully illustrated keepsake that tells the fascinating history and behind-the-scenes stories of the 100 most popular and cherished love songs of all time. Pop the champagne, get the roses ready, and settle down in your favorite armchair. Love is universal to the human experience and love songs bring us joy and remind us of happy moments from our life. We all want it and we all crave it but it's not always easy to find. In this beautifully illustrated volume, We Found Love Song by Song tells the fascinating history and behind-the-scenes stories of the 100 most popular and cherished love songs of all time and their everlasting impact. From artists such as Fred Astaire and Nat King Cole all the way up to Whitney Houston and Harry Styles, this all-encompassing collection of love songs is sure to ignite the flame and inspire a new favorite playlist. What moving song did Paul McCartney pen as a love letter to his wife and record in one day? What iconic tune about cheating and piña coladas ends with a relationship being saved? What popular ballad was written from the perspective of Juliet and led to hundreds of in-concert proposals? Spanning musical genres and decades of classics and modern hits

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Good morning, Nanny. How are you doing today?

Speaker 2 (00:02):
I'm great? How are you.

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Absolutely excited to talk with you? Because I was that
freak that sat there with my tape record and creating
rock and roll love letters from these love songs. Yes,
my god, I mean they do and to this day.
But the thing about these love songs is that I'll
sit down with an ram song like Everybody Hurts and
call that a love song. What is the real definition
of what a love song is?

Speaker 2 (00:25):
That's funny as a huge rim fan, I love you
hearing saying that. You know, it's really interesting because doing
this book kind of made me realize there's no one
solid definition of what a love song is. You know.
I think that you know, people you know think about Okay,
I love song. It's about romance, it's about your significant other.
But there's so many different types. You know, there's love
songs about unrequited love. There's love songs about seduction. There's

(00:48):
love songs about you know, the love that could have been.
You know, there's a love song about kind of missing
the one you know, you know, having a misconnection, And
so love songs to mean a lot of different things,
and so I think it's kind of about what makes
how it makes you feel like you mentioned with everybody hurts,
you know that that makes you feel comforted, that makes
you feel like those song is giving you solace, And

(01:10):
so I think that's it's a little bit more of
your personal relationship to it.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Oh yeah, I mean that's like love Hurts from Nazareth.
That's my go to. I gotta go to it.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
So when you put a book like this together, are
you in shock and op with the way that it
was brought forward?

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Ah?

Speaker 1 (01:28):
In what sense? In the way that There are many
times when I want to I'll ask a singer songwriter
about how they really brought this song forward, and my
interpretation has nothing to do with their reality.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
That is very true. There were some of those songs
that absolutely that it was like, you know that that
came together how or what you know? You know, and
some of them, you know it made sense, you know,
so like if something like in the Still of the Night,
you know, the songwriter wrote it about a relationship he
was in, he was apart from his beloved and so
he was, you know, thinking fond memories and trying to
bring it back. Okay, fair enough. Some of these other
songs were either you know, kind of put together. They're

(02:02):
they're you know, they people are circumspect about how they
came together. Other ones, you know, like Don't You Forget
About Me is about friendship, you know, simple minds, you know,
and so like, which you know, don't even realize until
you actually kind of look at the lyrics and hear
about what the people have said. You know. Obviously there's
things like Bartha My Dear by the Beatles, which is
about a sheep dog. So you know, the inspirations come

(02:24):
from everywhere.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Would you say that Taylor Swift changed the face of
love songs?

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Oh that's a big question, you know. I think in
the sense that she has absolutely brought the experience of
being a teenage girl and what it's like to be
a teenager and a young woman in love and really
kind of capturing that experience and saying, well, ay, why
this is important, and be really delving into the ups
and downs of it and the highs and the lows,

(02:50):
and then also just making all this valid, you know.
I mean, I think, you know, obviously, when you're growing
up and you know you're having these heartbreaks and you're
having these you know, successes as well, you know, it's
very turbulent, and she really excels at getting to the
nitty gritty of everything. And you know, I mean, I
think of all too well, which is I think, you know,
her magnum opus at this point, and it talks about

(03:12):
you know, the good and the bad, and the nostalgia
and the sadness and every the little details about a relationship.
And so she's really good at specifics as well and
just really kind of zeroing in and nailing what romance
is like. And so in that sense absolutely, I mean,
a Taylor Swift Love Songs collection, I would buy that
in a heartbeat.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
What about those songs that were brought together because they
were impersonating the artists, such as Crazy Little Thing Called Love.
I wish I could have heard Elvis Presley sing this
song because I think that Freddie Mercury did a beautiful
job with it.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
You and me both, you know, and I love that
that came together that he wrote it on guitar, which
obviously you know in the band Queen, he's not necessarily
known for being the great guitarist. That's Brian May and
he kind of was getting a bathtub actually kind of
put it together. But I mean everything about that, you know,
and so you can kind of tell because it is,
you know, it's very kind of you know, you can

(04:05):
tell he's having such a great time with it, kind
of paying a tribute to Elvis, but you know, also
kind of exploring different sides of his voice and putting
on a character. But oh, that's such a wonderful song.
I never get tired of hearing that song.

Speaker 1 (04:19):
I'd love to see the research on how people are
going to read this book, because I think they're going
to look at the titles like I did, and they're
going to go from chapter to the twenty five chapters
later to back to chapter number three, because I mean
the way that you lay this out, you've given me
it's almost like a juke box of answers.

Speaker 2 (04:35):
I look, that is such a good description of it.
I completely agree. You're right, you know, I arrange it chronologically,
but you know, it's one of those things where you
can look at the index and say, what is my
favorite song? Right, let's skip to that, and then maybe
you keep reading and see another song you're like, h
I don't know about that. Well, how does this kind
of come together? And you can kind of look and
figure out what makes sense to you. I mean, when

(04:56):
you talk about mixtapes, you could put together a dynamic
mixtape with different elements of this book for sure.

Speaker 1 (05:02):
I'll tell you one song that still caught me off
guard and even today it does Sexual Healing from Marvin Gay,
I mean, because I mean, first of all, for us
even played on the radio, it was like, are you
kidding me, we're using the word sex on the radio?

Speaker 2 (05:14):
Well, absolutely, you know, and that was definitely I mean,
that was his, you know, and you figure that came
out in like nineteen eighty three too, which you know,
you you you, I almost you almost forget that because
to me that feels like such like a seventy slow jam,
and you know, and that was his like you know,
last big hit basically, And yeah, I mean, and that
was another one that you know, I've heard it many

(05:34):
many times and it never really occurred to me, like,
you know, how did it actually come together? And there
was actually like kind of a you know, I mean,
instrumentation wise, you know, he really kind of went there.
He was using kind of new synthesizers and drum machines
to kind of do it himself, which is great, but
there was a book. I guess that he had kind
of on his coffee table that was a little bit

(05:55):
out there, a little bit risque, and you know, and
his co writer David Ritz said, you know, you don't
need this, you need Sexual Healing, and so that's that
was the inspiration, you know, and so yeah, I mean absolutely,
and so you know it's it's a paragon for you know,
if you need to get in the mood, you put
on Sexual Healing.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
As a mobile DJ for weddings. I'll tell you what, though,
we had to go through the evolution of Can't Help
Falling in Love? We had to grow into a modern
day world. And I think that the two biggest most
powerful love songs on the planet right now, Amazed by
Lone Star and Perfect from Edge Sharon and Beyonce. It
has to be both of them. Okay.

Speaker 2 (06:32):
I love hearing that then, because I always wondered about that,
because yeah, there was the original version that Ed did,
and then when Beyonce kind of came on the track,
it really transformed it. You know, having that female voice
and that female perspective that absolutely I can totally see
why that's a wedding song. You know, it's talking about
how someone is you know, absolutely right for you, and
you know that you that they are the one for you,

(06:52):
and so making sure that you have both people's perspective.
It's a balance, right then it's it's you know, it's
it's more reciprocal. It really kind of reflects a couple.
And I love to hear you say that about Lone Star,
because that song is such a you know, when it
came out, it really you know, it was a country song,
and obviously they had different remixes for you know, rock
radio and things like that, and that was you know
when you talk about like country love songs, you know,

(07:14):
I mean obviously Dolly Parton's you know I Will Always
Love You as up there, but my god, I mean
that one. And what I love about that is the
songwriters who wrote it, I think eventually got together. You
know that they they were you know, they were like,
you know, they started writing it together and they ended
up together. So you can kind of see that it
was the start of their relationship and the start of
their you know, romance, and you can really hear that

(07:36):
in the song. It's it's so genuine in that sense.

Speaker 1 (07:38):
Well, you talk about people coming together, I mean the
song three times a lady from the Commoners. My god,
he was he was looking at other women in that song,
and this is what came from it.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Oh absolutely, And you know, and that's what's so funny
sometimes is some of these you know, how some of
these songs came together. You know that it's it's like
you know what what again? You know, and things like that,
And you know, sometimes some of these songs don't necessarily
come from romance or you know, over the years, like
I think of Billy Joel's Just the Way You Are
that he stopped playing it for many years because it

(08:09):
had too many painful memories for him, because the reminded
him of one of his ex wives. So you know,
it's it's interesting in how, you know, gold sometimes comes from,
you know, different things. It's very interesting.

Speaker 1 (08:22):
Where can people go to find out more about you?
And if you're hosting a podcast, let me know where
it's at.

Speaker 2 (08:28):
So my website is annie z dot com and then
I am also on all social media under my name
Annie Zeleski. And then yeah, you can get my books
on kind of wherever you online retailers, bookstores and wherever
you head out and get your favorite books to read.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Wow, Annie, talking with you for ten minutes is not enough.
I mean, it's just because I think people need to
get this book and they need to create their own
conversations and finally learn the stories of these new songs
they're finding on streaming outlets.

Speaker 2 (08:57):
Absolutely, and you know it'll be a luminated It'll be
you know, sit down, it's winter, get under the blanket
with your loved one and sit down and read this
book together.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
As my recommendation, well man, please come back to the
show anytime in the future. The door is always going
to be open for you.

Speaker 2 (09:11):
Awesome, I'd love to.

Speaker 1 (09:12):
Will you'd be brilliant today?

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Okay Annie, Absolutely, you too.
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