the way that I feel when you laugh is like laughing

excellence:

And Then Nothing [Turned Itself Inside-Out] is an album by and about two people in a long and deep relationship. At this point Georgia and Ira, Yo La Tengo’s principal singer/songwriters, had been married to each other for more than fifteen years, and the content of the record showed. The lyrics to “Last Days of Disco,” sung by Ira, are a reminiscence about budding attraction:

Saw you at a party
You asked me to dance
Said music was great for dancing.
I don’t really dance much
But this time I did
And I was glad that I did this time.

In my mind he’s hearing a song like the Turtle’s “Happy Together”—something so relentlessly positive about love that it can’t possibly be completely true. If I were to choose two songs that, taken together, described the full spectrum of love, I might choose the Turtles’ classic and pair it with the very next track on And Then Nothing, “The Crying of Lot G,” in which Ira ruminates on everyday arguments that, for all the tension they create, boil down to “The way that I feel when you laugh is like laughing / the way that I feel when you cry is so bad.” Truly, this might be my favorite love song of all time, for no other reason than the simple perfection of that line. Later in the record Georgia responds with “Tears Are In Your Eyes,” a darker reflection of the same sentiment. That is what marriage is about, right? So happy together, sure, and sad together. You name the emotion—excited, depressed, blissful, bored—together. Deep love weathers all storms and exalts in all pleasures.