Our Song

“Oh, my love, my darling

I’ve hungered for your touch

A long, lonely time

And time goes by so slowly

And time can do so much

Are you still mine?

I need your love

I need your love

God speed your love to me!”

- North, Alex, Zaret, Hy. “Unchained Melody” The Righteous Brothers

Last night, when I was driving to pick up my son from a friend’s house, “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers came on from my least hip programmed radio station. I turned to my daughter and asked, “Did you know this was our wedding song?”

A month before the wedding of my husband and me, when the wedding DJ asked for our song, we still hadn’t decided. But we had debated about it.

“Never Tears Us Apart” by INXS had always been one of my favorites. And the part:

“I was standing

You were there

Two worlds collided

And they will never tear us apart”

seemed appropriate for the way we met before Early Morning Gym*. Problem was that my soon-to-be husband didn’t like it.

“I Need Love” by L.L. Cool J was actually on the table for about half–a-second (http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/llcoolj/ineedlove.html). My husband used to rap it once in a while to be funny when it was popular so it had sentimental ties to him, I guess.

“Bridge Over Troubled Water” was nice, but not really “our” song. I don’t know who suggested it, but my then fiancé decided to use it for the mother-son dance instead. I wound up dancing to “Unforgettable” by Natalie and Nat King Cole with my father, which was all the rage for father-daughter dances back then. (I wonder how Nat would’ve felt about his daughter creating a posthumous duet.)

“One” by U2 was another one of my husband’s choices. If you don’t listen too carefully, it sounds like a love song. A couple of years after we were married, a friend from graduate school thought it was ludicrous the song was considered. “It’s about AIDS,” she said. (I don’t know if that’s true.) I was more concerned with the lyrics:

“You gave me nothing

Now it’s all I got.”

“You ask me to enter

But then you make me crawl

And I can’t be holding on

To what you got

Because all you got is hurt”

“Well we

Hurt each other

Then we do it again”

As usual, my husband failed to listen to the actual words. Or did he….

I suggested “Wrapped Around Your Finger” by The Police, but my soon-to-be husband didn’t like that either, even though it was about getting married + Sting. Perfect combination in my opinion. Though the lyrics are a bit pretentious. I don’t understand half of them: http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/sting+police/wrapped+around+your+finger_20132153.html

I began to wonder if it was weird we didn’t really have A SONG. Didn’t every couple have one?

That movie “Ghost” used “Unchained Melody” by The Righteous Brothers, so the song had a comeback. I hadn’t seen the movie, and still haven’t. (I often shun popular movies. I still haven’t seen “Titanic” or “Avatar”.) But the song seemed lovely enough, even though it had no connection to us, so we agreed. (And apparently it’s a hard song to sing because they made a big deal of what a good job Clay Aiken did singing it on “American Idol”, not that I’ll admit to watching the TV Show.)

Our wedding day came, and it was time for the dance. It was the first time my husband and I were together in a sort-of-private way since that morning. (My family was stressing me out so he picked me up and we got a cup of coffee at 7-11.) Even though we were young, we waited a long time to marry. He’d been there through my parents’ divorce, a tough family transition, and for all those years of college. He got me. He got my family. He got my mother. As a teenager, I’d decided I’d never marry somebody who didn’t get my mother. He was sarcastic too, so I knew he was the one for me.

Now we had our own apartment in New York City waiting for us to finally move into that night. He and I looked into one another’s eyes with the realization we did it. We were finally married.

And the song became ours.

A couple of months later, I was driving to work and heard “When We Dance” by Sting for the first time:

“I’m still in love with you

(I’m gonna find a place to live

Give you all I’ve got to give)

When we dance, angels will run and hide their wings”

“Come and live with me

We’ll have children of our own

I would love you more than life

If you’ll only be my wife”

Damn, I thought, that would’ve been a good song too.

If only I’d bought the album before the wedding…

If I were getting married today, I’d choose “A Message” by Coldplay:

“My song is love

My song is love, unknown

But I’m on fire for you, clearly

You don’t have to be alone

You don’t have to be on your own"

"And I’m not gonna take it back

And I’m not gonna say, ‘I don’t mean that’

You’re the target that I’m aiming at

And I’m nothing on my own

Got to get that message home”

* Meeting my husband/anniversary Post:

http://theresamilstein.blogspot.com/2010/04/exercising-irony.html