Until I Found You: A Callback to Traditional Values of Love (Song Analysis)
The reason why Stephen Sanchez’s 50’s-inspired smash hit ‘Until I Found You’ is so popular.
There have been many songs relating to love, romance, and old-school courtship even ever since music was invented. In fact, the majority of songs ever composed are about love. However, why has Stephen Sanchez’s hit ‘Until I Found You’ become so popular with the young generation, despite the song having the sound and feel of a song that was played in the 50's?
‘Until I Found You’ has reintroduced the 50’s sound of folk rock into the mainstream, combining the slow tempo and the soulful vocals of time past, from the days when music was played on record players, to a new age with Spotify and autotune. Despite the sound being from a time past, from a time of our parents and grandparents, or even our great-grandparents, the song has captured the souls of today’s younger generation: the next generation of lovers.
So why is this song popular today? Simple: This song calls back memories of a time when traditional values of love were upheld.
Before our time, during the times of the 60’s, the 50’s, and beyond, love was a sacred thing to be valued and upheld. It was something to work hard for and to strive with all of our being for. Love was about commitment, of sacrifice, of devotion. In fact, the song speaks on the type of love where a man or a woman is incapable of loving anyone else:
I would never fall in love again until I found her. I said I would never fall unless it’s you I fall into.
It was during that time when proper courtship was the norm, and traditional and correct roles of the man and the woman within the relationship were upheld. The man was masculine, leading the relationship, and being strong, caring, and compassionate towards his woman. The woman was feminine, following the lead of the man in the relationship, and being soft, empathic, and respectful towards her man.
Divorce was not the norm back in the day, and young men and woman dated and entered relationships for the purpose of marriage. The man and the woman honoured the timeless commandments of God concerning the everlasting commitment involved in such a union between man and wife. Here is what Jesus Christ said:
Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”
“Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’, and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Matthew 19:3–6
Men were gentlemen, woman were ladies, and they treated their partners with the utmost admiration, awe, and reverence. The gifting of flowers, the dating, the slow-paced of building a connection and respectful physical escalation, the sincere confession of love, the proposal, the marriage, the lifetime together. All aspects of relationships, marriage, and love largely forgotten in this day and age.
Too often our partners are taken for granted. We forget to date them, cuddle them, connect with them emotionally, understand them. We even forget to make love to them and talk to them at least once a day for a few minutes. So often we forget the magic of love that captured our hearts when we were getting to know our partners. Yet the song encapsulates how much one’s partner can change life for the better, as shown symbolically:
I was lost within the darkness, but then I found her. I found you
The song speaks on how once you find the right partner, it is symbolic of a light that shines in the darkness. Without a partner, you are “lost within the darkness”. Which is true, in the sense that a good, loving partner gives a sense of inspiration, purpose, and direction in one’s life. When times are hard, when life is hard, a good partner can support you and strengthen you through the story waters. They can steady you, build you up, and guide your way. They are there to inspire and motivate you to be your best self. There are very few sources of inspiration more powerful than your lifetime partner that you love.
When you see what has happened to relationships and love in this day and age, it is night and day. Back during the times of traditional love, there was no LGBTQ, no feminism, no 304 or hook-up culture. Back in the day, men didn’t have one-night stands at the club, and women didn’t switch boyfriends ever few months. There were no deadbeat dads or baby mamas, no red pill, blue pill or black pill. There was no confusion about gender roles within a relationship or marriage, or where each partner stood with one another. Love was so much simpler back then.
The song “Until I Found You” takes us back to the 50’s and 60’s. When true principles of love were upheld and were kept simple. It takes us back to the time when men and women in love followed the biblical principles of how to love, treat, and honour their partners:
In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church,
However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
Ephesians 5:28–29, 33
Deep down, the people of today, young or old, want to go back to how love used to be, how love is supposed to be, how God intended love to be. Many people can deny their desire for such love, attraction, partnership, and companionship, but their desire will always be their. People can say they enjoy what today’s world promotes, which is the false kind of love, but their better selves, their inner lovers, their souls, yearn for traditional love.
Women today yearn for a strong, purposeful, powerful, masculine man that will take care of and provide for her and the family they will build together. They want a man that will support her, cherish her, and revere her feminine qualities. Men today yearn for a supportive, empathetic, understanding, feminine woman. They want a woman that will appreciate him, respect him, and admire his masculine qualities.
True companionship with a good partner that loves you and that you love is one of the greatest gifts God can give you, if not THE greatest gift. Choosing your life companion is the most important decision of your life, and choosing well will give you the most fulfilment and joy in one’s life. Love is something to appreciate and uphold, and should lead to an everlasting commitment and covenant with your husband or wife under God. If you have a partner that you truly love, it is the highest point of wisdom to nurture your relationship and/or marriage, and to pour all the love you have to your chosen partner.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
1 Corinthians 13:13
The song ‘Until I Found You’, with its unique yet timeless sound from more than half a century ago, captured the ear of all people today, young and old, because it calls back to a simpler time. A time of traditional values of love.
