"The genesis of the love song would seem to lie somewhere in the fertility rites of the ancient world..."

"... the Sumerians, for example, had a number of hymns/love songs to celebrate the sacred marriage of the king (human) to the goddess (immortal), these nuptials being conducive to a rich harvest, cultural plenitude, satellite dishes for everyone, and so on..."

[Ted Gioia�s "Love Songs: The Hidden History"] touches in passing upon the love song�s evolutionary brief�that is, to encourage men and women down the ages to have sex with each other.... [O]ne of his arguments is that the basic elements have been there from the beginning. It�s hard not to agree with him, really, when Egyptologists are finding amid the pottery shards and crumbling papyri lines like If only I were the laundryman � / Then I�d rub my body with her cast-off garments. Gioia credits women with the greatest breakthroughs in love-song self-expression: �Women were the innovators and men the disseminators�� which sounds anatomically correct, at least. Love shook my senses, / Like wind crashing on the mountain oaks. That�s Sappho, or the composite forensic entity known as Sappho, sounding like Kelly Clarkson.