Once an artist or band releases a song into the public, they have little to no control over how the public perceives it, which certainly seems to be the case for these classic rock hits that listeners often mistake for love songs, despite being anything but romantic. These tracks’ pointed language and passionate vocal deliveries make it easy to assume that the song is more lovey-dovey than it really is.
For the vast majority of the time, thinking one of these classic rock songs is actually a love song is a non-issue. But when a happy couple uses an incredibly creepy, perverse song about a stalker for the first dance at their wedding, well…things get weird.
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“Every Breath You Take” by The Police
The aforementioned go-to wedding song that’s actually about an unsettling stalker is, of course, The Police’s 1983 hit song, “Every Breath You Take”. Although Sting set out to write a love song, he realized the track was taking on a much darker meaning about control and jealousy.
“I think the song is very, very sinister and ugly and people have actually misinterpreted it as being a gentle little love song, when it’s quite the opposite,” Sting told BBC Radio, per Ultimate Classic Rock. “One couple told me, ‘Oh, we love that song. It was the main song we played at our wedding.’ I thought, ‘Well, good luck.’”
“Got To Get You Into My Life” by The Beatles
When Paul McCartney sang the words, “Then I suddenly see you, did I tell you I need you every single day of my life,” Fab Four fans everywhere wistfully imagined McCartney directing those romantic sentiments toward them. But unless that fan was green, floral, and able to roll up and smoke, McCartney wasn’t talking about them.
In Barry Miles’ Many Years From Now, McCartney said “Got To Get You Into My Life” was “not to a person. It’s actually about pot. It’s saying, ‘I’m going to do this. This is not a bad idea.’ So, it’s actually an ode to pot, like someone else might write an ode to chocolate or a good claret.”
“Romeo and Juliet” by Dire Straits
To misinterpret Dire Straits’ 1980 track, “Romeo and Juliet”, as a love song would also require one to misinterpret the William Shakespeare play of the same name as being romantic. Shakespeare fans might scoff at the idea, but it remains a common misconception nonetheless.
And indeed, Mark Knopfler was feeling anything but romantic as he wrote the song about his ex-girlfriend, Holly Vincent. He accused Vincent of using him as a stepping stone for her career, which he reflected in lines like, “You promised me everything, you promised me thick and thin. Now, you just say, ‘Oh, Romeo, yeah, you know, I used to have a scene with him.’”
“I’m On Fire” by Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen’s 1985 classic rock track, “I’m on Fire”, is undoubtedly a brooding, smoldering song about intense physical attraction and desire. A bona fide love song? That descriptor technically depends on how you define love. But something about the song’s first lines just seems…creepy.
“Hey, little girl, is your daddy home? Did he go away and leave you all alone? I got a bad desire.” Sure, words like ‘little girl’ and ‘daddy’ were common vernacular for grown women and men in the 1980s. Still, we can’t help but feel a little weird listening to Springsteen near-whisper those lines into the mic.
“White Wedding” by Billy Idol
The 1982 classic rock hit “White Wedding” has made its way into countless wedding playlists for no other reason than the fact that it has “wedding” in the title. But despite the allusion to a day all about love and unity, Billy Idol’s highest-charting hit is hardly romantic.
Idol began writing the song about his sister, who got married while she was pregnant. “Everything was totally all right, but I thought to myself, ‘What if this had happened 30 years ago? There would’ve been a huge outcry.’ I put a slight twist in the song to give it a more dramatic edge. I turned it round as if there was a crazed brother somewhere who was like Clint Eastwood and was coming back to murder whoever had defiled his sister,” he said, per Classic Rock.
“Brown Sugar” by The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones’ 1971 track, “Brown Sugar”, has questionable lyrics from the first verse. But if a listener can look past mentions of slave ships and whipping women, one might assume The Stones song is about love—or, from a more crass, rock ‘n’ roll perspective, sex, which, in theory, can be romantic. However, even Mick Jagger has looked back on this early 70s track and shuddered.
“God knows what I’m on about on that song,” he told Rolling Stone in 1995. “It’s such a mishmash. All the nasty subjects in one go. I never would write that song now. I would probably censor myself [and] think, ‘Oh God, I can’t, I’ve got to stop; I can’t just write raw like that.”
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