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19 Most Unlovely Love Songs

By Holly Pyne

12 February 2014

Every year, Valentine’s Day brings with it a fresh crop of albums with titles such as 100 Best Love Songs, Greatest Romantic Hits and Now That’s What I Call Affection! These compilations pertain to feature realistic musical depictions of love, but anyone who’s ever sat through one will know that’s baloney. They’re packing nothing but rose-tinted, one-dimensional Richard Curtis fodder.

Where are all the songs that show love for what it really is: weird, complex, scary, potentially dangerous and occasionally very messed-up? With that in mind, we present our pick of the finest real love songs: the oddest, most twisted and brutally honest romantic odes ever recorded. Enjoy. And then go and have a cry in the corner.

Listen to the whole playlist on Spotify

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1. Captain Beefheart - Ashtray Heart

If there’s a better line about romantic rejection than “You used me like an ashtray heart/Crushed me while I was burning out”, we’d like to hear it. But not experience it.

2. Dizzee Rascal - I Luv U

Essentially a lovers’ tiff set to music, Dizzee’s breakout single was an abrasive ode to the passive-aggressive sniping that peppers every relationship. Even the snare drums sound like they’re arguing.

3. Funkadelic - Some More

The group who brought us such tracks as Hit It And Quit It experience the sour end of the lovin’ spectrum here, suffering a “headache in my heart” and claiming no doctor can cure it.

4. Sir Lancelot - (Shame And) Scandal In The Family

A rollicking ska number tracking Trinidad’s least romantic family. The son tries to cop off with various women, only to be warned by his father, “That girl is your sister but your mama don’t know.” Finally, he tells his mother, who chuckles, “Your daddy ain’t your daddy but your daddy don’t know.”

5. The Modern Lovers - Hospital

Jonathan Richman treads a fine line between romance and creepiness here, with a canine-like loyalty to a lady who’s not interested. “When you get out of the dating bar/I’ll be here to get back into your life/I can’t stand what you do/But I’m in love with your eyes.”

6. Weezer - No One Else

Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo claims to have found a mathematical formula for the perfect pop song. But he’s not quite mastered love songs: “I want a girl who will laugh for no one else/When I’m away she puts her make-up on the shelf/When I’m away she never leaves the house.” Stick that on your match.com profile, see how far it gets you…

7. The Beatles - You Like Me Too Much

George Harrison wrote his fair share of twisted love songs, but none out-twists this one. “You’ve tried before to leave me but you haven’t got the nerve” sounds like something you’d hear yelled across the Queen Vic at closing time.

8. Dwarves - Everybodies Girl

Gloriously sleazy punk track about a chap whose girlfriend has been intimate with practically everyone he’s ever met. He even lists specific names, before proudly stating, “I’m in love with everybody’s girl.”

9. Tom Waits - Another Man’s Vine

This one features a sinister exploration of male jealousy and paranoia. A young soldier goes to war, and writes a letter back home to his wife every day. Suddenly, her replies all dry up, when the ever-sensitive Waits purrs, “I smell a red rose blooming on another man’s vine.”

10. Dolly Parton - Jolene

The ultimate twisted love song. Poor Dolly prostrates herself at the feet of a rival she knows could whisk off her man: “He talks about you in his sleep… I cannot compete with you, Jolene.”

11. Skip James - Devil Got My Woman

Luckless bluesman Skip lists possible reasons for getting dumped, concluding it was Satan: “She don’t drink whisky, ain’t crazy ’bout wine/The ol’ devil changed my baby’s mind.” He ends up muttering, “I could be right… Then again, I could be wrong.” It’s the second one, Skip.

12. The Count Five - Psychotic Reaction

In which a man becomes lovesick to the point of manic depression over a swinging Sixties beat.

13. Richard Hell - Love Comes In Spurts

Portrayal of the shock a man has on finding his view of love as harmless is naive; love not only “comes in spurts”, it also “murders your heart/They didn’t tell you that part.”

14. The Knife - Marble House

A monstrously grim look at the long-term effects of co-habitation: “I cut your nails and comb your hair/I carry you down the stairs.” It even goes as far as implicating unborn children in the whole miserable affair (“The seeds I sow will grow up prisoners too”).

15. Daniel Johnston - Man Obsessed

Kurt Cobain-inspiring Johnston offers this tale of unrequited love for a girl who works in a funeral parlour. He eventually decides “the only way you could get her to look at you is to die”.

16. Roxy Music- If There Is Something

Bryan Ferry’s permanently trembling vocal chords are put to fine use here, as Roxy explore the shrieking hysteria that can afflict the enamoured modern man. An increasingly desperate-sounding Ferry lists the various things he’d do to keep hold of his love, which range from impressive (“Walk a thousand miles”) to confusing (“Grow potatoes”).

17. Mouse and the Traps - A Public Execution

This is a blistering paean to ugly post-break-up bitterness, as Sixties band Mouse And The Traps try – in a completely unsuccessful fashion – to conceal their glee when an ex comes back begging for another chance, eventually concluding: “So, goodbye/Go on and have a real good cry!” Stay classy, guys.