Pop songs with truth and depth

These are a handful of romantic songs that have a truth to them and which I really love.

 Your true colours are beautiful by Cyndi Lauper

Youtube Cyndi Lauper – True Colours

This is a truth that’s sometimes very hard to believe.

And the darkness inside you
Can make you feel so small

But I see your true colours
Shining through
I see your true colours
And that’s why I love you
So don’t be afraid to let them show
Your true colours
True colours are beautiful,
Like a rainbow

If you want your relationship to change; if you want your own life to change; two essential foundations are these. You need  to trust and experience that your own true colours are beautiful. And you must, you absolutely must,  come to see and respond to your partner’s beautiful true colours. That’s not to ignore hurt and negativity, but if you mainly focus on  hurt and negativity, the relationship will shrivel.

We all of us have a feeling of a darkness inside us. And it sure does make us feel so small. Mostly we cope by avoiding it – having a secure niche or keeping restlessly busy or living a mask. But if we are rejected or criticised or lose our jobs, there it is, the feeling that “I’m not good enough” or “I always get it wrong” or “No-one ever sees me.” (To cope, some people bury the dark place so far inside they can convince themselves it doesn’t exist. But it’s not just you, everyone has it.)

The remedy is this. You need to start to trust that yes, the feeling of being weak or no good is a genuinely perceived feeling. But it’s not the real truth of who you are. It’s not like a tear in a jacket, but instead it is a stain that can wash out completely and reveal colours that are indeed beautiful.

And this song is true universally. Your true colours are beautiful. Maybe, in whole or in part buried under hurt and fear and protection. But for sure still there somewhere inside, still intact and for sure beautiful.

Yet, that is often hard for us to believe. People find a loving relationship, they’ve got the love right there in their hands. But they do not let the love in. They are loved, but the old habit of feeling not lovable dies hard.

Sit quietly where you can take the music in. Imagine that Cyndi Lauper or John Legend are singing this song to you. Here are some things you might like to talk about. Take turns in some manner that you have equal time. Speak and listen without interruption. Answer whichever questions you like, they’re just suggestions.

• Tell your partner some specific memory (it’s good to be very specific) when your true colours were present in your life. It can be small, it can be at any age. And another memory, and another. you can’t have too many!
• Tell your partner some memory when you took a risk, large or small, any age, based on believing in your true colours. How was that? What did you learn?
• How is it, talking about your true colours? Scary? Easy? Have you done it before, or is it new?
• Then a memory of when you’ve held back, for fear your true colours are not beautiful.
• What have you learned in this relationship, that makes you trust more that your true colours are beautiful?
• If you totally believed that your true colours are beautiful, what would you do not not do in your life today? What would you do or not do in the relationship?
• Tell your friend some very specific moments when his or her true colours shine out in the relationship, big or small, today or in the past.
• What matters to you most about this song? What is the deepest way it touches you?
• … and just keep going, you can’t do this too much!
• What is the true colour in yourself you are nurturing, that’s not ready to be seen yet? Could your partner help you to nurture that?
• Is there a true colour that you see your partner not trusting as much as you feel he or she could?
• What in your childhood did you need to protect, that is a specially vulnerable treasure?
• What in this relationship, do you specially protect, but you would love for it to have more space, if that was safe?

For all we know aka Love, look at the two of us
by Larry Meredith (made famous by the Carpenters)

This is a grown-up understanding about love. Links and covers are below.

Love, look at the two of us
Strangers in many ways
Let’s take a lifetime to say
I know you well
But only time will tell us so
And love may grow for all we know.

Love is not a one-off happening. It is not a final delivery. It is a continually evolving process, an endless work in progress. We all long for the sureness of “Now I’ve got my man, now I’ve got my woman.” But even when we’ve got it, a love relationship is still a process, still an unfolding, still a journey of trust and intimacy from moment to moment to moment. “Love look at the two of us” captures that truth perfectly.

I think this, by Sarah Anderson, is the best cover.  She brings such a depth from the heart. Sarah Anderson – For all we know [on Last FM]

Or on Spotify: Sarah Anderson – For All We Know

And there’s this as well. Are relationship therapists, hardened as we are to the bitterness, vengefulness and hurt in the front lines of the war of the sexes, secretly romantic and soppy to a fault? Are marriage counsellors secretly delighted when two people fall back deeply in love with each other? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!

So here is a sweet, romantic and touching film clip.  It’s also one that brings back the very happiest memories, from the time that the film came out, of love in my own life. And it happens to  have lyrics both beautiful and true. It’s OK to cry.

“Love look at the two of us” sung by Larry Meredith in the wedding scene from Lovers and Other Strangers (1970)

Take 10, 20 or 30 minutes and work together in co-operation to compose the story of your relationship, but ONLY the good moments. ONLY include moments that both of you enjoyed. You might want to include great learnings that came from fights. But don’t include the fight, unless of course you both enjoyed it. Otherwise, ignore all bad, negative moments. Just the good stuff.

Take plenty of time to bring back details, fine details. You want explicit memories of specific moments. However, the memory tends to smear things together into categories like “all the meals we cooked together.” So you need to do the work to un-smear that into specific meals you cooked that you really enjoyed. Get some paper, draw a line, and mark points on order on the line for each memory.

Now, look at this all-good relationship not as two people connecting, but as something in itself, with its own life. When you push all the bad stuff away, what is the good stuff like? Forget the bad stuff right now.

• If the relationship was a river, what kind would it be? Steady, thin, wide, rushing, meandering, changeable? Above ground or underground?
• If the relationship was an animal, what species would it be? What are its characteristics: playful, wild, tame, bold, hesitant, mischievous?
• What would make that animal bigger, stronger, happier?
• Looked at as one thing like this, what are the good qualities of this relationship in just three words or phrases (you each get three.)
• Still with only the all-positive relationship story are its downsides in not more than three phrases?
• How could you live the positive qualities more? Could you live them more in this room while you are talking?
• If the story continued into the future with only and always these good qualities, what would that look like?

You Colour Me by Pocket Universe

Youtube: You Colour me by Pocket Universe 

“You colour me with the lens of your perception
Forming opinion of me with the sum of your experience
But do you know the ‘me’ that you see is not Who I am?”
[Song by Pocket Universe from their CD Torment]

We don’t show ourselves fully even to our beloved, but instead show more or less a mask. Equallynwe don’t see our beloved straight. We see instead our projections: who we think or fear the other is, or who we long for them to be and therefore  demand they become. Between showing masks and seeing projections, sometimes two people have not all that much real connection.

Real love can only flow between people who are real. That means two things. First, that you have the courage not to show a mask but instead trust, that your true colours are beautiful. Second, it means that you see the other person as they actually are and don’t colour them with your perceptions.

I ask couples questions like this: “Write down, but don’t say aloud, the one crucial need you have in the relationship. Now, out loud, tell the other person what you think they have  written down.” Rarely the answers match. If the other person thinks you long for  “protection” when you actually want “freedom”, no surprise if you feel not seen and your needs not met. Plus, chances are excellent the other person needs protection, can’t admit it to themselves, and is projecting their need onto you.

Here are just a few things you might like to talk about. The topic of projection, masks and personas is a big one. This is just a few topics loosely based round the song.

Take turns in some manner that you have equal time. Speak and listen without interruption. Answer whichever questions you like, they’re just suggestions. Choose the conversation so the exercise is fun – the idea is to give an outlet to your shared brilliance in making a brilliant relationship.

• Talk about some specific time in your past, with another person, when you mis-judged that person and later realised they were not how you imagined. Big event or small, at any age. What did you learn about yourself?
• Talk about some time when you were younger, ie not in this relationship, when you projected an image or made sure you looked good, but underneath it was different. At work, or romantically, or with parents.
• How do you want people to see you? How do you ensure that?
• How does it feel talking about all of this, easy or scary?
• How are you afraid people might see you, and what do you do to prevent that?
• Who’s the person you’ve most changed your mind about in your whole life? For the better? For the worse? How did you create that you got them wrong? How did you change your mind?
• What are the mistakes you think make / have made in seeing your partner?
• What are the mistakes you WANT your partner to make in seeing you, ie the image you project?
• What are the mistake you think your partner WANTS you to make, ie the image he or she projects?
• How do you think you colour your perception of your partner?
• How do you think your partner colours his or her perception of you?
• What touches you most about this song? What’s the strongest hope or fear it brings up for you?
• On one piece of paper, write down in order the three things you believe the other person most wants from you. On another, write down the three things you need from the other person. Both do this. Then compare notes.

I am what I am, Gloria Gaynor, George Hearn, – and Catherine Tate

I am what I am with Gloria Gaynor is well known and this is a fun video. The original from La Cage aux Folles by George Hearn starts slower and more hesitant and has much more nuance of feeling. I like it more.

And here’s a unique version from Catherine Tate’s character Nan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHeh0WGmcSE