Love At First Sight?

Today’s blog topic deals with a question that will be asked a little further down the page.  I’ll attempt to answer it with my own thoughts, and then turn over discussion to all of you out there reading this.  I think it’s an interesting question, and very appropriate given the time of year we are currently in.

But first, we have a song to listen to, as this is the Sunday Jukebox portion of the week.

Did you know that there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of examples where two different artists record two different songs with the same name?  And, I’m not just talking about cover versions of songs either.  I mean two completely different songs by two completely different artists having the exact same (or very similar) title.  It happens a lot more than you think.

For example, take a song title.  Let’s use the title, ‘Thank You’, for example.  Alanis Morissette recorded a song back in 1998 called ‘Thank You’ (where the You was written as a U).  The following year, in 1999, Dido released a single also entitled ‘Thank You’.  And, in 2000, Canadian duo McMaster & James also released a song called...you guessed it.  ‘Thank You’.

Another song title that has been reused has been the song title ‘I Kissed A Girl’.  Oddly enough, both songs were written with the perspective of a woman kissing another woman.  Jill Sobule kissed a girl first in 1995, followed by Katy Perry thirteen years later, in 2008.  In this case, the songs were about the same subject, but were two completely different songs.

Then there are song titles named after numbers.  The number one proved to be hits for both Metallica and U2 when they used the number as a song title.

But, those are all examples of two different artists recording two different songs that just happen to have the same title.

What about a SINGLE artist who records two completely different songs, and gives both of them the same title years apart? 

(And, no, that’s not the question.)

Can you think of any that may fit this description?  Anyone?

Well, I can.  I actually did a blog entry on her and her younger sister back in June of 2011, but seeing as how Valentine’s Day is just a little over 36 hours away, I couldn’t resist spotlighting this particular song.

The artist in question is Australian pop singer Kylie Minogue, and she happens to have two completely different songs that have the same title.

The first version of the song was recorded on Kylie’s debut album, which was released the summer of 1988.  It was an album simply known as ‘Kylie’.  The final track of the album is one of the versions of the song.  You can listen to an audio clip of the song here, if you like.

Flash forward fourteen years later to the summer of 2002.  At this point in time, Kylie was enjoying a bit of a resurgence of sorts in the United States.  Although her 2001 album ‘Fever’ was her eighth full-length studio album, it was considered to be a comeback album for Kylie in North America.  Overseas, Kylie was just as popular as Madonna and Mariah Carey, but in the United States, her career stalled after the 1989 single “It’s No Secret”.  It took Kylie twelve years to make her way back on the charts, releasing ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ in September 2001.  The song was her biggest chart topper in North America since her cover of Little Eva’s ‘Loco-Motion’. 

With ‘Can’t Get You Out Of My Head’ becoming a huge smash, it was time to see what Kylie had planned for an encore.  For Kylie’s second American single (and third in the United Kingdom) from ‘Fever’, she had chosen a song that eerily had the same title as the track that appeared last on ‘Kylie’.  It may have had the same name, but as a song, it was a completely different arrangement with different lyrics.

And while the version that appeared on ‘Kylie’ was never released as a single, this version managed to hit #2 in the United Kingdom, and did respectably well in the United States as well.

ARTIST: Kylie Minogue
SONG: Love At First Sight
ALBUM: Fever
DATE RELEASED: June 10, 2002
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS: #23

So, now you have the answer to the first question.  Kylie Minogue had two different songs with the title “Love At First Sight”.  One failed to become a hit, while the other one managed to soar up the charts...well, depending on what country you came from.  In my own home country of Canada, for instance, the 2002 version reached the Top 10. 

And, this song leads to my intended question.  The one question that I want audience participation for.

Do YOU believe in love at first sight?

It’s a loaded question, I know.  I’ll give you some time to think about it.

As you may have heard from the two songs that Kylie Minogue recorded on the subject, Kylie seems to believe that this is the case.  Back in 1988, she point blankly admitted that yes, she believed in love at first sight.  Nearly fifteen years later, those beliefs seemingly still hold true.  And, certainly if you look through Kylie’s romantic life, she has had a lot of past loves including Jason Donovan (a singer who acted with her on ‘Neighbours’), Michael Hutchence, and Olivier Martinez.  Sadly, she never found lasting love with any of these suitors, but she’s currently dating someone else, so all is good.

But as far as what I believe about love at first sight...it’s a little more complicated than that.

I’m more of a believer in lust at first sight, to tell you the truth.  Maybe I’m the only one who feels this way, but I find that quite a few people that I know seem to confuse lust for love (or love for lust in some cases).  Certainly people develop crushes on other people.  I know I had my fair share in my preteen years myself.  But, I wouldn’t exactly call those crushes love.  Just because I may have admired them from afar didn’t necessarily mean that I was head over heels in love with them.  I just wanted to get to know them better so that I could decide whether my feelings for them were love, or simply just a crush.

As you may have predicted based on my original statement about the subject, my success rate for these crushes was in fact a goose egg preceding a per cent sign.  Zilch.  Zero.  Nada. 

It wasn’t a complete loss though.  A lot of the crushes that I had did end up fading away in time.  In a couple of cases, I even developed a friendship with them.  Of course, quite a few of them seemed almost appalled at the idea that I could ever find them attractive.  They certainly didn’t feel the same way about me!  The way I see it though, it truly was their loss, although at the time I felt like they had ripped my heart out and sliced it to bits with a Ginsu knife.

But anyway, back to the whole idea of people mistaking lust for love.  I realize that I am probably looking at this through the literal meaning mostly, but sometimes the literal way is the best way to examine and/or explain something that is already complex. 

I think that for quite a few people out there, whenever they see someone walking by, they might think to themselves that the person is very attractive and that they might want to get to know them better.  But, is that really considered to be love at first sight?  I don’t believe so. 

I imagine that some of you reading this will disagree with me though, and that’s okay.  A difference of opinion is always welcome.  I imagine that for some of you, you might have seen the man or woman of your dreams and exclaimed to yourself ‘that’s who I’m gonna marry someday’.  But, how often does it work out that your prediction or assertion comes true?  I haven’t conducted a poll or anything that scientific in nature to know for sure, but I’m guessing that a good portion of you were misguided.  And, I imagine that some of you knew exactly what you were looking for and ended up getting it.

The point that I’m trying to make is that I feel that a person really has to get to know a person before falling in love with them.  Sure, it would be nice if the person you gazed at fell in love with you from the moment your brown eyes met their baby blues.  But, I don’t believe that it happens quite like that.  It might take a few months of dating, or maybe even a first date, or even that first real conversation for someone to think ‘I really could be into this person’.  It’s very rare that one simple gaze could turn a person’s heart to mush, especially when one doesn’t exactly know anything about the other person.  But, I suppose lust does make one’s brain and heart do some crazy things.

(Notice I said lust and not love.)

Then there’s the whole idea of online dating.  Unless the person has a profile picture up on their profile (that’s assuming that the picture that they have posted is actually of them and not a scan from Seventeen magazine), I don’t know if the phrase ‘love at first sight’ would apply, as you’re really only able to go by their likes, dislikes, interests, and how they communicate through writing.  It would be difficult (but not impossible) for people to try and form a connection of love with such limited information.  Just like offline dating, you really have to get to know a person before falling in love with them.  Just having a conversation with them through eHarmony simply isn’t enough.  Sure, you might be attracted to someone to ask them on a date, but I hesitate to call that love at first sight, really.

I guess the argument that I’m trying to argue is that I feel that love at first sight is an extremely difficult feeling to possess.  Not impossible...just difficult.  At least, it is for me, given that I’ve never been in a situation where I myself have fallen in love at first sight.  Maybe fallen in like would best describe it.  I don’t know.

I’m interested in hearing your opinions of the subject at hand.  Do you believe in love at first sight?  Do you believe in lust at first sight?  For those of you in relationships or marriages, how long did it take you to realize that s/he was the one for you?  Was it love at first sight, or love at first month, or love at first year, even?

Some food for thought this twelfth of February, 2012.