Indian Love Call
January 31, 2010
When I was a kid, my grandma used to rave about old Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald movies. She loved the Indian Love Call, a song in which two people in love sing back and forth, responding to each other in song.
So, in the car recently, I heard the song Watcha Say by Jason DeRulo. It’s a really catchy song. By the 7th or 8th time I heard the song, it started to remind me of the Indian Love Call. Two people in love singing back and forth in response to each other. The difference is the two people in this song have a lot of problems.
It’s interesting to me that the Indian Love Call was so well remembered by the people from it’s generation (written 1920s) as the iconic love song. It was probably in the “top 100″ pop songs for its day. Now, this song was two people from a far distance calling to each other. They were confident that once together they’d be happy, they just had to travel to each other. The DeRulo song is also quickly becoming a memorable song for this decade. If it isn’t really memorable, then it’s certainly over played enough to be. This could be the song that this generation looks back on as an iconic pop love song. This makes the problem of cheating in the song such an interesting aspect of the song. In the 1920′s, people were confident that once married, they’d stay married. Cheating wasn’t prominently discussed and probably wasn’t as wide spread of an issue. Now, it just is, and, our love songs reflect that.
