
Not every musical tells a love story. But a huge number of successful ones do. This is why the Conditional Love Song is a standard, if optional, building block for a mighty musical.
Resistance Helps You Feel the Pull
The term “Conditional Love Song” harkens back to “If I Loved You” (from Carousel) the quintessential falling-in-love-while-resisting-it duet that wrote the book on how to get an audience invested in a relationship. The audience wants to feel the pull of two souls, irresistibly drawn to each other. And in order to do that, they must also feel the resistance that the pull overcomes. Even when it’s love at first sight (which happens to be the case on one side of the duo in Carousel) there’s still got to be something in the way of these two hearts becoming one, or we wouldn’t have a story. The Conditional Love Song gives us a chance to feel the weight of the repelling obstacles, as well as the magnetic pull that’s going to tear through the barriers and unite them at last.
Most times, but not always, the resistance is internal to the characters. It’s about fear of vulnerability, of getting there before their beloved, or of what being in love would actually mean in terms of commitments and changes to their status quo. Sometimes the resistance is so wholly external that a conditional love song wouldn’t fly, like with Tony and Maria in West Side Story. The two lovers are so fully immersed in obstacles to their union that there can’t be any hesitation in Tony’s “Maria” or the story wouldn’t even get off the ground. But that’s a special case, and this post is about the love songs that make us start pulling for a couple before they really know, or are ready to admit, that they’re pulling for themselves.
The Self-Protecting “If”
In “If I Loved You,” Julie resists admitting to feelings that have been palpable to the audience from the beginning of the show. She’s very much aware of them, but she knows her beloved is not the marrying type and has a reputation for stealing girls’ hearts and then absconding, preferably with their money. She doesn’t have any money and he’s already got her heart, but she’s not going to let him toss it away. So she sings about how, if she loved him, she’d never tell him so. He softens, under a love that is evident and persistent, in spite of everything she knows about him, while making zero demands. He gives us a tour of his own internal resistance – some nihilistic beliefs about human insignificance, and a fear of vulnerability and responsibility – and echoes her promise that if he loved her, he wouldn’t tell her either. But still she loves him exactly where he’s at and, in the end, he can’t resist it. By the end of the song, they are kissing.
It’s ironic that the term “conditional love song” is based on “If I Loved You” because it’s the unconditionality of Julie’s love that softens Billy’s heart. But Julie never admits to the love, hiding behind the conditional “if,” so the song, not the love, is conditional. It is also ironic that the mother of musical theatre love songs is about a relationship that’s destined for tragedy and that perpetuates some really destructive ideas about domestic abuse (addressed in last week’s issue). But irony notwithstanding, “If I Loved You” proves that a well-written love song can be mighty. If it can even temporarily melt our objections to Julie with Billy, it can certainly invest an audience in a synergistic relationship.
Some terrifically fun love songs about internal resistance to feelings one doesn’t want to admit are “I’m Not At All In Love” (The Pajama Game), and “I Won’t Say (I'm in Love)” (Hercules).
The Conditional Love Song looks a little different when the love story has an adversaries to lovers arc. I want to touch on three types of these.
The Unwilling Object of Affection
The first is where one of the leads is trying to win a heart that’s determined not to be won. In Guys and Dolls (a deeply problematic classic), Sky Masterson, an arrogant, wealthy gambler, has $1000 riding on his ability to persuade Sarah Brown, the beautiful leader of a Salvation Army Mission, to join him on a dinner date to Havana, Cuba. He tries to sweet talk her and she shuts him down. He tries to bargain; he’ll bring a dozen sinners to the mission in exchange for her companionship at dinner. But a date to Havana? Sarah’s pretty sure she’d be signing up for more than a date and she’s not going. He’s never before encountered such resistance and she’s never before met an unrepentant sinner who knows his Bible better than she does. She starts singing “I’ll Know” about the man she’s waiting for, with his “calm steady voice, those feet on the ground” and not forgetting about his “strong moral fiber” and “the wisdom in his head.” None of this resembles Sky in any degree, but he counters with how he’ll know by the chemistry, how he’ll be stopped cold by the sight of her face. He is evidently singing about her, and she’s far enough from impervious that when he grabs and kisses her at the end of the song, she resists and then yields, only to slap him across the face as soon as she gets a grip on herself. The chemistry is obviously there. Will it be enough to make up for the mismatch between their values? The song and Sky are making a determined pitch for chemistry to outweigh values, while Sarah’s mind is arguing with a less rational part of herself that tends to agree. Whether or not that works for members of the audience might depend on how much experience they have with relationships where there was more chemistry than common values.
Mutual Rejection
The second type is when both romantic leads are resisting the pull, and you might wind up with a pair of songs. For Henry Higgins and Eliza DoLittle (My Fair Lady) those songs run from dismissive to hateful. First, Higgins sings “I’m an Ordinary Man” about his horror of entering into a romantic relationship. It’s significant that the song betrays an astounding lack of candor about his own character. “A patient man am I, down to my fingertips/ The sort who never could, ever would/ Let an insulting remark escape his lips” he sings with a straight face.
This is a man whose mother won’t let him converse for two minutes with her bishop, lest she be excommunicated for his insults. Two scenes ago, he told Eliza, “A woman who utters such disgusting and depressing noises has no right to be anywhere. No right to live.” In the last scene, he called her “deliciously low” and “horribly dirty.” And it’s not even like he’s unaware of his snarky tendencies. Eventually, he’ll argue, “I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl. The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.”
Evidently, Henry Higgins is telling us things he would like to believe, but doesn’t, about his own habits. So there’s a good chance that his claim to prefer both a drilling dentist and the Spanish Inquisition to a woman in his life, is equally wishful and untrue thinking. It’s not like he’s never let a woman in before. Indeed, he admits to having become selfish and tyrannical when he did. By the time he’s worked himself up into a lather and declaimed in no uncertain terms, “I shall never let a woman in my life,” we’re pretty sure that he will.
Next, we get Eliza’s “Just You Wait” in which her fantasies about revenging herself on him start out mildly (their financial situations will be reversed and she’ll refuse to lend him money) and progress to murderous (she’ll give the order for a firing squad to shoot him dead). But why is she so angry at him? She just howled that she wouldn’t say her vowels one more time – she’s known them forever and has been endlessly repeating them for three days. Colonel Pickering started trying to explain the exercise and Higgins stopped him short. “There’s no use explaining…Drilling is what she needs. Now you leave her alone or she’ll be turning to you for sympathy.” He then informed her that until she could say her vowels correctly, she would have no lunch, no dinner, and no chocolates. It’s not the loss of food that’s infuriating; her history is packed full with hungry days. It’s how he sees her – like a dog who’ll learn to roll over if he dangles the right treat, instead of like a thinking and feeling person with dignity of her own. And her fury reveals that she cares a great deal more than she wants to admit about how he sees her.
Bro and Womance
The third variation of the enmity to love arc is enemies to friends. This is for bromance or womance stories like Elphaba’s and Glinda’s in Wicked. In “What Is This Feeling” the two new roommates sing about their mutual detestation in language that is laced with reminders that hatred is not the opposite of love, but its frustrated close cousin. Most of the song could apply to Maria and Tony in West Side Story with the change of only one word, from “loathing” to “loving.” These two souls are so preoccupied with each other that their unadulterated hatred doesn’t really have a chance at lasting. They plan to loathe forever, but we know they’ll wind up fast friends.
A Promise that Needs to Be Honored
One vital thing to remember is that, when it’s done well, the Conditional Love Song makes a promise to the audience. When we feel that irresistible pull against the obstacles that keep two people apart, we expect those obstacles to be overcome. I think a big part of that is that we expect the love story on stage to have personal resonance off stage. We are familiar with both the push and the pull in our own lives, and we want to believe that the pull will triumph and carry us to a happy ending. So, if there’s some sort of fatal flaw in the relationship, we’re going to need the show to give us something better than the romantic closure we’ve been rooting for ever since they started singing about the possibilities. Otherwise, we’ll leave the theatre unsatisfied. And we’ll tell our friends not to bother with that one.
That’s the dynamic that ultimately dooms the message of My Fair Lady. It’s a tale about a flower girl who becomes a duchess by dint of her own fierce determination (plus her longing for her mentor’s respect), only to wind up throwing away her self-respect in order to be his flower girl. It’s devastating. Next week, I’m going to write about how that happened, and how an alternate ending could have healed the story.
Do you have a favourite Conditional Love Song? Which one? And why?
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See you next week for a closer look at the love story in My Fair Lady.
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