The Valentine's Day Song Massacre

Well love is in the air, it must be that time of year again folks - Valentines Day. Of course, some utterly shite and some quite brilliant songs have been on that little four-letter word ‘love’, and this year Gigwise is providing you with an essential list of the polar ends of the spectrum.  Firstly, we’re giving you the definitive twenty most evil, abhorrent love songs before moving on to our favourites. Obviously, love has an uglier side, so we’ve also come up with the top heartbreak songs/loner’s anthems and the best anti-love songs. So whether you’re loved up, on your lonesome, or think that this whole Valentines Day bollocks is just a cynical marketing ploy, there’s something here for you…

The Shittest Love Songs Ever:

20/ The Police – ‘Every Little Thing She Does is Magic’
Sting and the boys had some dodgy moments in their time, but this has to take the biscuit… Give us a song about stalking over this any day.

19/ Phil Collins – ‘Against All Odds’
The once respected Genesis drummer who went on to ruin that band when he took over on vocals somehow managed to tarnish his name yet further with this steaming turd of a song. Horrible. Later covered by Westlife and Mariah Carey. God help us.

18/ Stevie Wonder – ‘I Just Called To Say I Loved You’
A once-great tunesmith plummeting to these depths makes this supernaturally shit 1984 smash quite remarkable. Nice sentiment perhaps, but these corny couplets, syrupy enough to be lifted from the tackiest of Valentine's Day cards.
 
17/ Keane – ‘Somewhere Only We Know’
The troll faced one and his two fellow bedwetters weren’t just being MOR with ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ they were outright offensive. We’ll look forward to their next release with a due sense of dread and fear.

16/ Whitesnake - 'Is This Love?'
What would a gang of men in leopard-skin spandex armed with 7-string stratocasters know about love?  Maybe that's why they have to ask... Our guess is fuck all.

15/ Toni Braxton - ‘Unbreak My Heart’
Where should we begin? The warbling, the lip tremble, the slow ebbing away of our will to live… Forget your heart, thanks a lot Toni you’ve broken ours. 

14/ Jennifer Rush – ‘The Power of Love’
Big-hair, big vocals, gaudy words – really everything that was wrong with eighties power ballads personified within a few minutes of nausea.

13/ Mariah Carey – ‘Hero’
A song that single-handedly propelled the self-obsessed wench that is Mariah Carey into global superstardom – for that reason alone this is one hell of an evil record. 

12/Celine Dion – ‘Because You Loved Me’
The woman with the vainiest neck since Deirdre Rachid continued her unwavering onslaught of tedious ballads with this, which is so bad it gives ‘My Heart Will Go On’ a run for its money. 

11/Jamie O’Neill – ‘All By Myself’
Okay, maybe fat arsed, single women in their mid-thirties may like this kind of shit after watching Bridget Jones’ Diary, but for the rest of us this is just outright painful. 

10/ Phil Collins – ‘Groovy Kind Of Love’
With such an awesomely bad catalogue of songs to choose from, it’s hard to round on one in particular. So we’ve picked two. With this one, any song that reminds you of the film Buster has to surely go down as one of the worst ever crimes against music?

9/ Ronan Keating – ‘When You Say Nothing At All’
Oi, Ronan shut it! Really it would have been better if you had kept your trap shut instead mate.

8/ Westlife – ‘Flying Without Wings’
Gagworthy, putrid, slickly produced and devoid of soul or any substance (hey, just like any other Westlife hit) made all the worse for the obligatory standing up bit on the key change. Give us Take That any day.

7/ James Blunt – ‘You’re Beautiful’
Aaaarggghhhh aaargghh aaaargh! The rich army boy with the nasally whine somehow became 2005’s coffee table favourite with this monumental slab of rubbish. Incredibly the two follow-up singles were even worse. The man should be court marshalled for crimes against music.

6/ Eric Clapton – ‘Wonderful Tonight’
What better way to say, "I love you" than with a handful of dusty pentatonic blues licks? One of the dullest songs ever written, as well as overly sentimental bollocks.

5/ Bryan Adams – ‘Everything I Do (I Do It For You)’
For what seemed countless weeks and months the gravely voiced Canadian clung on to the number one top slot like a parasitic worm. Save a dodgy duet with the ugly one out of the Spice Girls, thank the lord he’s since been banished to relative musical obscurity.    

4/ Chris DeBurgh – ‘Lady In Red’
The elfin, bushy eyebrowed songsmith who somehow went on to spawn a Miss World should have been locked up for this – arguably the worst and soppiest piano ballad ever committed to plastic.

3/ Whitney Houston - 'I Will Always Love You' 
Put simply, like having your ears strangled.  And for the fact you have to watch clips from the bollockfest that is the film in the video. Mouth-quiveringly awful.   

2/ Lionel Richie – ‘Hello’
Not only did it come with perhaps the creepiest video ever - of a teacher prank phone calling a blind student - the song itself was cheesy and nauseating beyond comprehension. Very, very wrong. Goodbye Lionel.

1/ Celine Dion – ‘My Heart Will Go On’
A Titanic musical travesty. The pseudo-Gaelic pipes, the vocal histrionics, the vacuous lyrics, the fact that the song goes on forever. Your Heart will go where exactly?? A voyage on a sinking ship in icy waters is preferable to this drivel.