Love has been one of the most important issues in human life for all time. It means strong emotional and physical connections and lets people indulge themselves in its joy, depression, anticipation, and striving. Among popular music nowadays, there are always descriptions about love in most of songs, which called ¡§Love Songs¡¨. The goal of this study is to observe how the users interpret the gendered implications in love songs when they are listening to them. Furthermore, this study tries to find out the relation between users¡¦ interpretations of love songs and their love experiences and imaginations. Adopting the method of in-depth interviewing, this study interviewed 11 college students and collected related information. Through analyzing the interpretation toward specific love song lyrics of these interviewees and their explanations about their own love experiences and imaginations, this study finds that users will think about the gendered implications in the specific love song lyrics they chose when they are engaging in love song decoding. At the same time, they show their understanding toward the mainstream gender discourse. With the comparisons between users¡¦ decoding and mainstream gender discourse, this study categorizes the decoding of love songs of users into three positions: preferred, negotiated, and oppositional/ critical. Meanwhile, users will connect their love experiences and imagination about love relationship to the characters and plots in love songs, expressing their attitudes to the characters, including of identification, denial, projection, and question. Besides, study finds that there is a two-way interactive relationship between users; love songs decoding and their love experiences and imaginations. That is, not only users¡¦ love experiences and imaginations would influence their interpretations of love songs, users¡¦ interpretations of love songs would also influence their imaginations and anticipations toward love

Master of Music / Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance / Amy Underwood / The following report is extended program notes that focus on the expression of love in various ways. These songs were presented on a graduate recital March 31, 2015 in All Faiths Chapel at Kansas State University. It is in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master of Music degree in vocal performance. The works included are by Bellini, Bernstein, Hahn, Koechlin, Obradors, Saint-Saëns, Schumann, and Sullivan. Below is a detailed description explaining the focus of the report. Many musicians discuss the musical elements including key signatures, time signatures, harmony, rhythm, and melody. They may also discuss the understanding of the music through the viewpoint of the vocal text. The musical elements and how the subject matter connects the two together is important to understand when giving a recital. It makes the music come alive for the audience and it is a true interpretation of how it should be performed. Love is a topic which many composers explore because of the natural emotion people feel about its perception. Different feelings and emotions conjured in the hearts and minds of humankind. Love is a personal feeling, and after studying the poetry and music, I assigned an adjective or verb to each song that describes a more specific facet of love’s emotional spectrum. These adjectives and their portrayal by various composers will comprise the focus of this paper.