i hate love songs

+ how you actually get the girl

I hate love songs.

Specifically, the catastrophizing, apocalyptic duets that are perennial Top 40 favorites. Think: “Die with a Smile” by Bruno Mars and Lady Gaga, “Till Forever Falls Apart” by Ashe and Finneas, “If the World Was Ending” by Julia Michaels and JP Saxe, “Grenade” by Bruno Mars (again).

if you’re gonna save me, can we at least look like Mr. and Mrs. Smith? I’ll bring my red Hunters.

Honestly, these songs sound so lazy to me. Yes, they have basic but effective orchestral swells that romanticize the morbidity of holding hands as the world tumbles around Julia Michaels and JP Saxe. And yes, these songs feature some seriously talented vocalists (you’re everything to me, Lady Gaga). But everything else about these songs ring so…hollow.

In trying to make a universally relatable message—that everybody wants a forever soulmate—these songs give us nothing at all. There’s nothing relatable about “the tide taking California” (“Till Forever Falls Apart”) or falling on a bomb (“Grenade”) because NOBODY lives in the same universe as Sharknado or Apocalypse Now. Be serious, guys.

And I’m specifically calling out the guys. When I floated this essay idea to my boyfriend, he agreed that these songs might lack emotional depth but that he still finds these songs very sweet and romantic (of note, my boyfriend is very sweet and romantic). We talked about how guys enjoy feeling like a knight-in-shining-armor, offering to fall on a grenade (“Grenade”) and shelter their girlfriend as the sky falls (“If the World Was Ending”).

So, maybe I hate apocalyptic love songs because I’m a woman who learned everything about relationships from the Taylor Swift School of Romance. Where Bruno Mars and FINNEAS drone on about hypothetical doomsdays, Taylor Swift zooms in on the magic and mystery of everyday love. I want hyper-realistic details like “burnt toast Sundays” (“You are in Love”) and how he has “his mother’s eyes, his father’s ambition” (“Superman”).

In “Till Forever Falls Apart,” FINNEAS laments, “I guess there’s nothing more romantic than dying with your friends.” Yes, there is Finneas. Literally anything is more romantic than holding your situationship while “the tide takes California” (“Till Forever”). I don’t want grandstanding claims about being together on Judgement Day—these hypotheticals are just a cop-out with no actual follow-through. I want breakfast in bed and I want you to fold my laundry. I want dates at coffee shops and I want you to sing me to sleep. Maybe it’s boring and domestic to you, but it’s a hell of a lot more swoon-worthy to me.

psa to boyfs everywhere

TLDR: This isn’t Pompeii. I don’t want to catastrophize for love, I want to live for it.

If you really want to get the girl, here are some gorgeous, less morbid songs that can help: