"Love" songs that aren't

I heard an interview with Carly Simon, who said she was always floored by the number of people who wanted “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard it Should Be” played at their weddings.

Totally. It’s basically “If you love me, you’ll have sex with me.”

You gotta be fucking kidding me. The lyrics could not more obviously be about a woman who’s very unhappily settling for this guy because she couldn’t find anyone better.

Snippet:

Yes, I recall reading about that situation. But I still marvel that people can hear lines like “Did I disappoint you/Or leave a bad taste in your mouth” and think it would be appropriate for their wedding day.

I guess a lot of women don’t pay attention to the words or maybe they just remember the chorus but Whitney Houston’s Saving All My Love For You is about a woman who’s boyfriend is a married man. Well, I suppose it’s a love song but not one that should be hailed as romantic. :smack:

Heh. I dropped in to post about that one. I don’t think any other suggestions in this thread come close to this song as the ultimate combination of warm loving embrace with vicious backstab.

In Let’s Stick Together, originally by Wilbert Harrison but popularised by Bryan Ferry, the narrator is trying to coax his wife into staying in their unhappy marriage. First, he goes on about the sacredness of their marriage vows. When that fails, he uses their child to try and guilt her into staying. Emotional blackmail, if you ask me.

Along the same lines, I recently had someone tell me that she and her husband danced to Ms. McLachlan’s “Angel” at their wedding.

She laughed and thought it was funny as hell when I told her that the song was about heroin addiction (Sarah says so on the ‘Enhanced Quicktime’ features on the CD).

In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear
You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You’re in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there

To be fair, I Will Always Love You by Dolly Parton is most certainly a LOVE song, and a very beautiful one - it’s just completely inappropriate for weddings, etc. Whitney’s version of it, though, is more of a mass murder song (as in, that’s what it almost inspires me to commit ever time I hear it …)

Actually, that’s what a lot of these are - they’re really ‘love songs’, just not perhaps traditionally romantic or bridal dance material.

Blondie’s One Way or Another’ is hardly a love song either, being of the stalker variety.

True story. I went to a wedding a few years ago. The couple attends my church. One of the other fella’s from church, Johnny, had some DJ experiance and he volunteered to spin the music. They asked for something slow and romantic for the first dance but didn’t specify a song. Johnny didn’t think too hard about the lyrics and came up with a classic. When it came on I started laughing so hard I had to go outside. The song?

You’ve lost That Lovin’ Feeling”!!!

You think that’s bad? I’ve experienced, or been told about second hand, instances of “With or Without You” and “Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” being used at weddings. Oh well… I guess it’s better than “Bloody Sunday” or “Even Better Than the Real Thing”.

Me too, Junior. Me too.

Yeah, but if you ignore the lyrics (which some people apparently do), it is a beautiful melody.