Love Songs All Address God

In 1998, Nick Cave*, an Australian rock/pop artist, was asked by the Vienna Poetry Academy to give a series of talks on the nature of song-writing. A year later he gave a slightly revised version of the same speech at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Here is an excerpt on the relationship between love songs, God, and “saudade”, a Portuguese word connected to a sense of longing and desire for God’s presence.

Though the Love Song comes in many guises – songs of exaltation and praise, songs of rage and of despair, erotic songs, songs of abandonment and loss – they all address God, for it is…