Courting cancellation: 10 ‘romantic’ songs that are actually wildly offensive
“You’ll just know.” These are often the words that follow the question, “How do we know when we love someone?” The emotion remains a constant contradiction: one of the most common in the world yet equally elusive and profound. When the words fail us, we turn to love songs, to the likes of Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and The Beatles, who lend us a helping hand and add shape this boundaryless definition.
Music has always been a good way for us to make sense of emotions that otherwise might escape us. Songwriters can take internalised feelings and bring them to the surface in a way that makes sense to us and that we want to engage with. When we fail to tell the person we love how we feel, we resort to song lyrics, as is the beauty of music and the complicated nature of words.
Of course, some artists miss the mark. Given love is a hard emotion to define, and given the fine line that people tread, which dangles above devotion and stalking, some songs which were supposed to be interpreted as tales from a lost romantic wind up reading like the scribbled notes of a jaded lover. Many a great songwriter has fallen foul to the undefinable nature of love and painted themselves in a poor light because of it.
It’s a lot more common than you might think for a song that you initially thought was romantic to be creepy. Here, we will look at ten of the best examples of songs you should avoid referencing when telling somebody that you love them.
10 romantic sounding songs that are actually creepy
Tegan and Sara – ‘Living Room’
There has always been a common fantasy about the hot neighbour. Whether exchanging glances first thing a morning on the way to work or trading notes through bedroom windows, this image has been used multiple times in music. Tegan and Sara take this prose and twist it to be something quite disturbing in their track ‘Living Room’.
The song is from the point of view of a stalkerish neighbour who silently obsesses over the person who lives next door to them. They seem to be in a depressive state after a breakup, and the neighbour gets off on their heartbreak and fantasises about being a rebound. It’s a strange track with unhealthy lyricism.
The Police – ‘Every Breath You Take’
If you imagine the lyrics above without the musical accompaniment read by Liam Neeson in some gruff and gritty thriller, then the true intention of the song is immediately apparent. Sting wrote the song in a paranoid state during a period when he suspected his wife might have been having an affair.
Clear hints spring to the fore with lines like, “Every smile you fake,” but overall, the message seemed to be masked for some as they were blinded by the sound of chiming reggae guitars. This is a sign of how melody can twist our psychology.
Lionel Richie – ‘Hello’
The creepy side of this song comes less from the lyrics alone but from how they are interpreted after you watch the music video. In it, Lionel Richie plays the role of a teacher who has seemingly fallen in love with a blind student and uses the fact that she can’t see to follow her around without her noticing.
The student moves from class to class, and in tow is the sweet-sounding Lionel Richie asking, “Is it me you’re looking for?” While the student is just trying to learn. It all comes across as very strange, and the tip of the iceberg is that he seemingly professes his love for her before properly introducing himself.
Smashing Pumpkins – ‘Ava Adore’
A common critique of relationships is that people don’t fall for the person, but they fall for the idea behind the person. In other words, they see potential and spend their relationships trying to change someone so they’re a better reflection of their type.
Smashing Pumpkins take this unhealthy attitude even further in the song ‘Ava Adore’, which is about a jaded lover hellbent on shaping their partner so they are better suited. This involves pulling “your crooked teeth” and declaring, “We must never be apart, we must never be apart.” It’s deeply unsettling.
Radiohead – ‘All I Need’
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that one of Radiohead’s love songs is sung from the point of view of a creep, given one of their most popular tracks is dedicated to professing they are as much. However, ‘All I Need’ doesn’t just claim a spot on this list because of its lyrics, but also because of the strange way they’re sung.
Each obsessive line is mumbled, slurred lazily by Thom Yorke as he says, “I’m a moth who just wants to share your light; I’m just an insect trying to get out of the night.” It’s another track where words of devotion border on stalking, and it can be a hard song to listen to.
The Beatles – ‘Run for Your Life’
The Beatles aren’t exactly strangers to love songs; some of their tracks surrounding devotion and adoration are some of the sweetest that music has to offer. That can’t be said for their offering on ‘Run for Your Life’ though, which is one of the more sinister songs by the Fab Four.
The whole track centres around the problematic nature of watching an ex get with somebody new, leading to the band threatening said ex should they want to get with somebody else. The words, “Well I’d rather see you dead, little girl, than to be with another man,” don’t leave much to the imagination.
Bruce Springsteen – ‘I’m On Fire’
When Bruce Springsteen wrote Nebraska, he inhabited the characters of multiple villains throughout history, singing from the point of view of stalkers and murderers in a strange and dark concept album. ‘I’m On Fire’ was originally written for this record, and it would have sounded at home on the album, but it wasn’t released until Springsteen’s next offering. In isolation, it sounds incredibly creepy.
The song is about a man flirting with a younger girl, asking if she is home alone and hinting that he’d like to come round. He sings, “Hey little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go away and leave you all alone? I got a bad desire, I’m on fire.”
Prince – ‘Gett Off’
In all fairness to Prince, he doesn’t dress this song up as romantic, but it’s the way he says it, as if he will be doing his muse a favour, that really makes this track creepy. He announces that he has heard the person in question isn’t satisfied in the bedroom and so offers to sleep with them to help out.
“They say you ain’t you know what, in baby who knows how long, it’s hard for me to say what’s right, when all I wanna do is wrong,” he sings, offering his expertise in love-making for a jaded partner.
The Bee Gees – ‘Nights on Broadway’
The beautiful harmonisation of The Bee Gees means it’s difficult to hear their music and not be swept up in some kind of romanticism. However, when you listen to the lyrics of their song ‘Nights on Broadway’, it’s clear that something more sinister is at play.
The band sings about someone they are stalking, following them around the streets despite the fact that the person they’re following doesn’t have any idea that they are being followed. They sing, “Well, I had to follow you though you did not want me to, but that won’t stop my loving you; I can’t stay away.”
Death Cab for Cutie – ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’
There have been a number of creepy and questionable lines emerging from the indie scene; however, the strangest can be credited to Death Cab for Cutie on their record ‘I Will Possess Your Heart’. Vocalist Ben Gibbard embodies the character of someone who simply will not get the hint and is lost deep in a hopeless devotion.
It’s an unrelenting ballad towards the twisted romantic as it lasts eight minutes without a sign of levity. He sings, “You gotta spend some time, love, you gotta spend some time with me, and I know that you’ll find, love, I will possess your heart.”
