Silly Love Songs

"You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs.

But I look around me and I see it isn't so.

Some people wanna fill the world with silly love songs.

And what's wrong with that, I'd like to know

Cos here I go...again..."

- Paul McCartney and Wings, Silly Love Songs

"A sentimental song, that casts a magic spell,

They all will hum along, we'll overact like hell...

For this is the song that goes like this..."

- Galahad and the Lady of the Lake, Spamalot

When you turn on the radio and hear music with lyrics, at least nine times out of ten, the song will be a love song of some sort, either praising love and one's lover (or wished-for lover) to the high heavens, or singing about how much angst or anger love gone sour has caused. (These songs are sometimes indistinguishable from songs about Intercourse With You.) For some reason, there's always a market for even the silliest of Silly Love Songs, making this an Undead Horse Trope.

Frank Zappa once noted that if popular music really could change or affect people, everyone would be in love.

Music critics of the past commonly referred to this sort of song as a "Moon-June song", sometimes with "spoon" added, after the (supposed) tendency for writers of these songs to rhyme the two words together. The originator of this name was likely the 1908 hit Shine On, Harvest Moon.

Some performers write Anti Love Songs because they want to try something different. They never stop the deluge of Silly Love Songs that fill the airwaves. And what's wrong with that? (A lack of variety, of course, but Tropes Are Not Bad all the time.)

If you want to hear an example, just turn on your radio to any popular music station. You'll find one soon enough. Listing them all would be pointless and time-consuming. Some of the sillier examples could be listed here, especially those that hang a lampshade on their triteness.

This trope name was first coined by John Lennon, who criticized Paul McCartney for always writing Silly Love Songs. McCartney in turn wrote the song he gave the title to as a rebuttal.

Compare Intercourse With You, songs about... making love.

Particularly silly examples:
"Just an old-fashioned love song playin' on the radio
 * Never gonna giiiive you up, never gonna leeeet you down...
 * Played with by Australian comic, Tim Minchin, at the 2008 Secret Policeman's Ball, where he sang a song that began by extolling the virtues of his lover, but then got to the chorus which went: "If I didn't have you ... then I'd probably have somebody else..." Still played fairly straight, as the song says that although he might have somebody else without her, he does have her, and that's special.
 * Also subverted by Tim Minchin (several times) with Inflatable You; a loving ode to an infatable doll. And You Grew on Me, which compares his love to his partner as quickly worsening diseases.
 * And more. Tim seems to like his messed up love songs.
 * The Gershwin song "Blah, Blah, Blah."
 * Paul McCartney's song "Silly Love Songs", as quoted above.
 * It's technically by Wings, but the misattribution is not exactly wrong.
 * Similar to McCartney's lampshading of this trope, Paul Williams' "An Old Fashioned Love Song", as well as Three Dog Night's cover:

And wrapped around the music is the sound

Of someone promising they'll never go

You swear you've heard it before

As it slowly rambles on and on"

"Pizza Angel, please come to me
 * It isn't that silly-- unless you watch him singing it with a trio of Muppet clones of himself.
 * There's also a few levels of this trope working, as the song's about an actual love song playing on the radio as well as being a love song itself (since listening to the love song on the radio prompts the singer to muse about his own romance).
 * Most Broadway musicals include at least one Silly Love Song; Spamalot has one titled "The Song That Goes Like This", which explains how every Broadway musical contains at least one Silly Love Song.
 * FM Static's song "My First Stereo". A line in the chorus goes "My first love was my first stereo." Yes, it's true.
 * The Mystery Science Theater 3000 experiment Overdrawn At the Memory Bank has "Loving Lovers Love", sung by Pearl and Observer.
 * Another episode has "Gypsy Moon" (as in the film of same name), making use of nearly every word that rhymes with 'moon'.
 * Veggie Tales once replaced Larry's silly songs with "Love Songs by Mr. Lunt". It ended up being a song about how much Mr. Lunt wanted a cheeseburger, and his being tempted to have breakfast at Denny's rather than staying faithful to "his cheeseburger!"
 * Not to mention "Pizza Angel", where Larry performs a fifties ballad (complete with double-tracked voice, leather jacket, and backup singers) to his delivery dinner.

Tomato sauce and cheese so gooey

Pizza Angel I'm on my knees

You'll live forever in my me-e-emorieeees"

"Those bloody great ballads we hated at first
 * There are a number of silly love songs in musicals:
 * "Love Song" from Pippin.
 * "Hitler/Khan Love Duet" from The Complete Millennium Musical (Abridged).
 * Played with in My Fair Lady.
 * Also subject to hilarity in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
 * "Mix Tape" and "Fantasies Come True" are more traditional, but Avenue Q parodies love songs in "The More You Ruv Someone".
 * Hilariously subverted by Sara Bareilles with "Love Song". The story goes that her producer told her that she was doing pretty well as an up-and-coming artist, but she still needed a big hit. "You need to write me a love song", said the producer. Sara, not liking this idea, decided instead to write a song about how she's not gonna write him a love song. And now it's her Signature Song. And now it's probably stuck in your head.
 * The Beautiful South's "One Last Love Song" is about these.

Well I bought them all and now I'm writing worse."

"And when you've gone upstairs I'll creep
 * The Beautiful South also wrote "Song For Whoever", which subverts the trope; the musician is writing songs to keep him in money ("I love the PRS cheques that you bring") based on whoever his latest girlfriend is - whose name he has conveniently forgotten.

And write it all down

Down

Down

...Oh, Julie, oh Alison, oh Philippa, oh Sue..."

"Moon-kiss-June-bliss.
 * "Title of the Song" by Da Vinci's Notebook is a meta "love song". The songwriter started out intending to write a parody of a Boy Band song, and ended up parodying ALL boy band songs. Ever.
 * Older/ Deader than you think: back in the 1800s Ambrose Bierce commented:

'Tis this appalling stuff,

such miserable trash,

that makes us cry out, 'Hold! Enough!'

and use too oft a big, big"

"Elenore, gee, I think you're swell
 * Much older than that, even. Medieval minstrels composed silly love songs up the ass. Basically the ancient equivalent of, "Tra la la, I love you, dee dah dah."
 * My lovely horse
 * Mildly parodied in The Turtles' "Elenore", which randomly juxtaposes straight Silly Love Song material with parental opposition and Intercourse With You themes, and includes the famous lines:

And you really do me well.

You're my pride and joy, et cetera"

""I no longer feel I have to be James Dean...""
 * Word of God says that "Elenore" was written as a Take That against the Executive Meddling of their record company, who wanted them to make more commercial hits like "Happy Together", when they wanted to move on to more progressive music and concept albums like Battle Of The Bands. So they deliberately wrote the most banal bubblegum pop song they could, but it still was a big hit and a signature Turtles song.
 * Noah and the Whale had a little hit among indie-folk fans with the song "Five Years' Time". Why it's silly?

"In your life
 * Subverted and quite possibly deconstructed by, of all people, Taylor Swift with the song "Fifteen". A freshman girl in High School meets a boy that she feels is her true love, and she's already planning to marry him... and then he dumps her for another girl, breaking her heart. The song was based on the experience of Taylor's longtime friend Abigail Anderson, who is mentioned by name in the song and appears in the video.
 * Weirdly, while that may be half the point of the song, I personally heard it as Swift disowning her own earlier Silly Love Songs in the light of the fame those same songs brought her: "Back then I swore I would marry him someday, but I realized some bigger dreams of mine." In other words, the heartbroken girl eventually moves on, realizing that in the big picture, there are more important things to obsess about than catching whatever hunk happens by - even if she still has some emotional scars from the experience.

You'll do things

Greater than

Dating the boy on the football team

I didn't know it at fifteen"

"You're a mystery
 * The Michael Buble song "Everything" seems to fit with this trope.

You're from outer space"

"Bumpy and lumpy, I know it sounds corny,
 * Because all woman love to be called confusing space aliens.
 * "Haven't Met You Yet" is a bit of a reconstruction, it's a silly love song to his future significant other, and he has no idea who it is. The whole thing is filled with hopes and promises to a woman he's never met.
 * If we're talking Buble, we have a whole plethora: "The Best is Yet to Come", "I've Got The World on a String", "Crazy Love", "All I Do is Dream of You", "Baby (You've Got What It Takes)", "How Sweet It Is", and "Moondance", just to name a few.
 * Although he didn't write either "I've Got the World on a String" or "Moondance"; they were both covers.
 * The tribute album I Miss Buffy The Vampire Slayer (three guesses what it's a tribute to, and the first two don't count) is pretty silly overall, so its love song, "Kinda Wish D'Hoffryn Was My Boyfriend" is exceptionally silly.

I kinda like a guy who's a little bit horny.

He's a vengenace demon; don't wanna cross him.

His swingin' hell dimension is totally awesome!"

"69 Love Songs is not remotely an album about love. It's an album about love songs, which are very far away from anything to do with love."
 * A common subject of parodies by Weird Al, both specifically (eg, "Addicted to Spuds" of "Addicted to Love") and generally (eg, "I Was Only Kidding" and "You Make Me"). Some are silly love songs in their own right (very silly love songs), while others are actually about a Stalker With a Crush or outright hatred for the other party.
 * The subject of the Paul and Storm song, I Will Sing a Lullabye (to your vagina).
 * The Suicide Machines' "Sometimes I Don't Mind" gently parodies these: the first verse and the chorus both sound like a generic love song, which makes the second verse seem a little weird ("You lick my hands then I get a rash, but that's okay"), but in the third verse it becomes obvious that it's been about a pet dog the whole time ("You won't lay down, you'll hardly sit / I give you a bath when you smell like shit, but you don't mind...").
 * "Gitchee Gitchee Goo" from Phineas and Ferb is a parody of this. "Don't worry if you get lost, the lyrics are meaningless anyway."
 * The Dutch group Jazzpolitie has the song Liefdesliedjes (Love Songs) in which they Lampshade most love song cliches. But the refrain is still: "There's only one way to tell you [what I feel for you]... Love Songs... You should hear them..."
 * Supertramp has a few. Notably, Give a little bit, Downstream, and Oh! Darling!
 * Anything by Celine Dion. Oh, the Narm...
 * The Magnetic Fields' album 69 Love Songs, which is not quite Exactly What It Says On the Tin by being 69 songs about love songs. In frontman Stephin Merritt's own words:

"I'd lost my faith in love, now I believe again
 * Brotherhood of Man's "Save All Your Kisses For Me" is a subversion, with the last line being 'even though you're only three'. This has been covered to make the song into a Last Note Nightmare shockfest about child rape.
 * The Moldy Peaches song "Anyone Else But You" is an INCREDIBLY silly love duet including references to the Konami Code and shaking turds out of pants.
 * "Baby" by Justin Bieber.
 * All his other songs qualify, too.
 * Delta Goodrem's Believe Again is this Up to Eleven, every possible instrument and happy musical quotation is in this song, so it may have lived in Narm almost entirely, if the verses didn't save it so much...The chorus for your reading pleasure:

My heart was a broken place, now I feel whole again

You bring me honesty,and that's worth believing in

and I believe, I believe again"

"Dead since 1973
 * Hugh Laurie sang the love song "Mystery" in A Bit of Fry and Laurie. It involved a girl he never met, whom he was almost completely incompatible with and that died before he was born. It was a mystery why he was in love with her.

You've been dead now ... wait a minute, let me see...

Fifteen years come next January (JAN-uary)

As a human being you are history

So why do I still long for you?

Why is my love so strong for you?

Why did I write this song for you?

Well, I guess it's just the mystery"

"Don't say goodbye, my dar-ling
 * Tricia Yearwood's "How Do I Live", the closing theme to Con Air. It was later made even sillier with an intentionally cheesy, So Bad Its Good cover by M.G. Bowman for Homestuck.
 * The sketch show Hello Cheeky had one or two songs every episode, written and performed by the regular cast. All that were love songs were parodies, such as Moon Over Romford, in which all the exotic locations typically found in love songs have been replaced with less glamorous English locations -- Carrots For My Lady, about giving a sweetheart vegetables so she can cook an Irish stew -- and Your Third Leg, about a woman with three legs. Then there's Don't Say Goodbye...

Goodbye is a terrible word

Farewell and adieu

Are terrible too

And ta-ta is simply absurd

Don't say goodbye, my darling

Because it would make me feel low

So don't say goodbye, my darling...

Just pack up your suitcase and go!"

"It's been said and done
 * The opening lines of Selena Gomez and the Scene's "Love You Like A Love Song" deserve mention simply for lampshading the oversaturation.

Every beautiful thought's already been sung

And I guess right now here's another one

So your melody will play on and on with the best of 'em"