10 worst love songs of all time

‘Love and Affection’ – Nelson

There’s already a certain stench that comes off any hair-metal romantic ballad. As much as bands like Poison turned songs like ‘Every Rose Has Its Thorn’ into sleazy rock gold, there were also many artists that seemed to make The Osmonds look like Shakespeare when writing about their love and affection for their other half. If this genre needed to die by 1989, the year before grunge broke gave us one of the last stinkers of the genre when Nelson came along.

Though I hesitate to even call them hair metal, they certainly have the look down with their wavy model-esque hairdos, but a lot of ‘Love and Affection’ feels like something that would have come out of an after-school special for middle schoolers, which makes sense considering both of the singers are the songs of Ricky Nelson, one of the most milquetoast rock and roll stars of the Elvis Presley era.

But what makes everything extra gross is what the song is about, with both of them talking about writing the tune about their love for famous model Cindy Crawford. While it’s sometimes better to leave the nameless subject of the song a mystery, knowing that it was about one of the biggest names in Hollywood at the time reads like someone showing the shrine that they have for their imaginary girlfriend.

‘I Just Called To Say I Love You’ – Stevie Wonder

There’s hardly anything that came out of Stevie Wonder’s playbook that the gods haven’t touched. Even if he could get schmaltzy now and again, it’s hard to hate on a song as pure as ‘Isn’t She Lovely’ or be all that down in the dumps listening to ‘Higher Ground’ or ‘Superstition.’ But those were all in the 1970s, and the minute that Wonder hit the 1980s, he faced a serious rough patch when all he could offer up was ‘I Just Called To Say I Love You.’

But this inclusion has less to do with the melody than the production and recording of the tune. Wonder has hardly written a bad melody in his life, but the premise for the song feels like something that would make a better greeting card than a proper tune, written after leaving his mother’s house and forgetting to say that he loved her on his way out.

Whereas ‘You Are the Sunshine of My Life’ is a lot better at bringing those emotions to light, this feels like something that plays at the end of a cheesy 1980s rom-com about two people playing a game of phone tag rather than anything that fleshed out. It’s hard to hate on Wonder for most other things, but when we know what he is capable of when writing albums like Songs in the Key of Life, it makes stuff like this look even worse by comparison.

‘Hey There Delilah’ – Plain White Ts

After years in the public eye, it seems that the charts have still not received their fill of unassuming guys playing acoustic guitar. While there are some truly gifted guitarists who can sell a song with only an unplugged six-string, there are also more than a few who think they are going to make their millions hiding behind a handful of chords and hoping that they will pull a fast one on people who don’t know any better. While Plain White Ts were already a decent pop-flavoured take on rock and roll, ‘Hey There Delilah’ goes from cute to saccharine to revolting within the span of one verse.

Plenty of rock acts have had songs that are about missing their loved ones back home, but hearing Tom Higginson sing about this person half a world away feels like describing the most superficial aspects of their personality. It’s clear that this lady goes to school, lives in New York City, and is all he’s thinking about, but since all ballads are meant to have a personal touch, this feels like something that was thought about in an hour for what they thought a dream girl should be.

Unfortunately, though, Higginson does know exactly what he’s talking about, recalling later that he was writing it for a girl who wasn’t interested in him and used it to make something that sounded as beautiful as she was. This would be cute if it were done in the right context, but considering this is the same person who tackled romance as delicately as ‘Hate (I Don’t Really Like You)’, he gifted us with one of the least substantial love songs ever created and gave every college dorm bro an anthem to belt out to any girl they come across.

‘Achy Breaky Heart’ – Billy Ray Cyrus

A lot of people tend to forget how insane the country boom was once the 1990s started going. Even though grunge was the order of the day from most people’s perspective, everyone had the chance to line dance whenever they heard Garth Brooks on the radio or channel their inner independent woman when listening to Shania Twain. If there was one point where everything got ridiculous, it was when we decided to give mullet rock and country music a massive hit.

While Billy Ray Cyrus rode the high of ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ before getting saddled up with Lil Nas X on ‘Old Town Road,’ are we going to forget some of the goofiest lyrics ever written in this song? Most country lyrics aren’t meant to be the deepest thing in the world, but the lyrics here are as cornball as anyone could get, as Cyrus talks about all of the different body parts that need to be kept in check now that his woman is out of his life.

The massive hatred of the song wasn’t lost on parodies, either, with Weird Al basing his entire version of Cyrus’s hit on how he is so sick of listening to it every time it comes on the radio. Many artists have had the one song that they get absolutely sick of, but out of all the songs on this list, this is the one case where the overexposure ensured that everyone born beyond 1989 would hate this song based on the amount of line dancing they had to do in gym class.

‘Cherry Pie’ – Warrant

Before grunge had even begun, there were already signs that hair metal was staying too long at the party. Bands like Winger were still breaking through to the mainstream, but there was something in the air that felt so artificial when listening to the lesser-known acts like Dangerous Toys and Bang Tango. If there was one song that should have logically pulled all of us out of the musical coma, it should have been when Warrant wrote the worst metaphor in any love song ever.

Granted, it’s easy to cut them some slack when looking at their approach. Jani Lane didn’t like the idea of writing a silly pop song, but the label insisted that they needed something that fit in with Aerosmith’s commercial stuff from the time. And so began his attempt at making a song about sex-based food puns, but the idea of choosing cherry pie was one of the worst calls ever made in a pop song.

While the song has some decent guitar work in it, hearing him talk about his girlfriend’s promiscuity in the same breath as cherry pie doesn’t feel like a compliment, especially given the fact that anyone who’s ever had a cherry pie before knows that things get very messy very quickly. So by the time that Nirvana and Pearl Jam started rising to prominence, Warrant made us all jump on the bandwagon to reclaim a piece of our innocence.

‘Muskrat Love’ – Captain and Tennille

Everyone looking back on the 1970s always needs to be careful about which sections should be remembered. There are some fantastic songs that have laid the groundwork for where we are today in that decade, but it’s also worth acknowledging that the era of disco and bell bottoms could get overwhelmingly lame when it wanted to. And in terms of the average love song, the Captain and Tennille may have come up with a song that feels like getting musically neutered for three minutes.

While there have been a handful of decent songs written about furry friends, knowing that grown-ups managed to put a song that would pass for a children’s tune on the hit parade is still mind-boggling. Tennille had always sounded like everyone’s fun aunt who happened to have a music career, but this is where that middle-aged sentimentality gets to be too much, especially when the keyboards come in and sound like they’re sprinkling the song with pixie dust.

There was still a lot of room to have fun throughout the 1970s, but it was clear that this was the kind of manufactured stuff that made everyone from Heart to Led Zeppelin look even more badass. All love songs are open to interpretation, but someone has seriously crossed a line when they give music fans the Fisher-Price version of what a pop song is supposed to sound like.

‘Your Body Is a Wonderland’ – John Mayer

In the era of random white dudes playing guitar, John Mayer has had a foot in two different worlds for years now. While he is still known as one of the best guitarists of the modern age and actually has impressive albums under his belt, the amount of times he has put his foot in his mouth in his lyrics and in the press has cast a dark shadow of douche over him. Even though that kind of ire escalated over time, most would have seen it coming based on the first song that put him on the map.

Compared to every other college bro acoustic song, ‘Your Body Is A Wonderland’ is certainly not the worst, but it’s definitely the most indicative of that time. Mayer does have a few decent musical moments in the song, like that jazzy breakdown at the end of the tune, but the fact that he tried to get into this girl’s heart by using words like ‘bubblegum tongue’ reads more like someone who tried to put every cutesy metaphor that he could into a single line to fill the verse.

And it seems that even Mayer has more of a problem with the song as well, even introducing it live as the song that he had to begrudgingly get through before going back to the rest of the show. The modern version of Mayer might be a bluesy soul worthy of The Grateful Dead, but if this were everyone’s first reaction to him today, chances are he would have been laughed out of the room.

‘You Light Up My Life’ – Debby Boone

There aren’t any rules in terms of who or what a love song can be based around. While it can be annoying watching someone turn generic love songs into an assembly line, writing a song based around a dog or Paul McCartney writing ‘Got To Get You Into My Life’ about weed still proves that the wildest idea can work if you sell it well. But there also needs to be passion behind it, and even if Debby Boone had her heart in the right place ‘You Light Up My Life,’ the performance is practically on life support.

Despite being known as one of the best-selling singles of all time, Boone’s song from the movie of the same name is the best example of her walking in her father’s footsteps. Pat Boone had already been the first person to realise that they could make rock and roll sound lame, and since Elvis Presley would have been too risque for young Debby, hearing her write this romantic song centred around her love for Jesus is enough to restore someone’s virginity if listened to for more than 24 hours.’

But while religious songs have their place in pop culture and have been pulled off well over the years, this tune is practically a sermon masquerading as a finished love song. Everything might be extremely sincere, and Debby’s voice is still perfect for the track, but when all of it comes together, all it brings to mind are days spent singing along in church rather than anything remotely romantic.

‘You’re Beautiful’ – James Blunt

So far we have covered a wealth of artists from the 2000s-folksy pop scene for a reason. While the genre is far from devoid of talent, it wasn’t exactly a shocker when someone hiding behind an acoustic guitar only wanted to find an excuse to have girls screaming for them half the time. But even if people could squint their ears through some of John Mayer’s biggest songs, James Blunt’s claim to fame is still based on one of the most misguided romantic ballads of all time.

While ‘You’re Beautiful’ sounds like a halfway decent tune that wouldn’t be out of place on a Coldplay record, the lyrics get more creepy as the song plays out. Everyone can empathise with someone chasing after the girl of his dreams and watching her get away, but since all we know is that this guy is a druggie on a bus trying to ask out this girl, it makes you genuinely concerned about this woman’s safety before anything else.

While Blunt realises that he will never be with her by the end of the tune, it would have been even funnier had we heard the realistic version of this story, with her either trying to run away in fear or pepper-spraying him before he gets too close. Even though most love songs imply some sort of deep passion or devotion to someone else, it takes a special kind of skill to make a romantic song sound predatory.

‘You’re All I Need’ – Mötley Crüe

For a band that defined everything that was hair metal, there was a good reason why Mötley Crüe didn’t go for ballads all that often. They had a good one to start everything off with ‘Home Sweet Home,’ but looking at songs like ‘Without You,’ it’s clear that talking about deep-seated feelings was never their forte. And if this ‘You’re All I Need’ was Nikki Sixx’s idea of a devotional song, it’s probably for the best that they kept them in the vault most of the time.

Sixx had always been known for making dark lyrics sound like a fun time, but whereas ‘Wild Side’ was about the underbelly of Hollywood, this is the story of a deranged maniac trying to chase after the love of his life. So when he’s faced with her breaking things off with her, naturally the only thing going through this guy’s head is to kill her, eventually going to her house and stabbing her before being arrested by police.

While Sixx may have wanted to write his own twisted version of a Sid and Nancy-style story, this still takes the cake for one of the worst tunes to come out of the era. Any artist can find the time to scrape together a half-decent tune for a ballad, but Sixx managed to truly go the extra mile by making the kind of song that would make people concerned for the mental well-being of those listening to it.