8 Deceptively Unromantic "Love" Songs

1. Enrique Iglesias - "Tonight (I'm Lovin' You)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UecPqm2Dbes The Song You Know The dance club anthem with an underlying sentiment that even the most dead-hearted excuse for a human being could get behind: Tonight, he's loving you. It's as simple as that. Why It's Not So Romantic OR IS IT? Affable latino heartthrob Enrique Iglesias has been crafting generic, oddly vanilla love songs for about a decade now. All he wants is to be with you, to be your hero, and maybe just...get inside you. Like, tonight. Whether you're down with that or not. When the chorus kicks in on the radio edited version, Enrique sounds like an overzealous teenager preparing for a first date by psyching himself up in the mirror: "Tonight I'm lovin' you." It's like an affirmation. Or maybe it's a down-on-his-luck, hopeless romantic expressing his undying affection for someone who doesn't even notice him. "It doesn't matter that you don't love me back," he thinks, "because dang it all, I'm still loving you." But in the unedited version, that coy sweetness is replaced with blunt aggression: "Tonight I'm f*cking you." When Iglesias tells you that, in no uncertain terms, he's going to f*ck you because he "knows you want it," that's no longer a sweet sentiment. That's a serial rapist sentiment. No matter what kind of pulsing dance beat you throw behind those words, there is no way that's going to come off as good-natured. Enrique does nothing to cloud the waters, admitting that it's a straightforward lyric. "Music has become so direct and you can say whatever you want, which is cool." It's astounding that Enrique never came close to courting the same kind of controversy Robin Thicke did with "Blurred Lines," the (m)anthem that supposedly endorses rape culture. At least Thicke didn't come right out and say that he was going to have sex with you, whether you want him to or not. Which is exactly what Mr. Bailamos is doing here.
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Bruno Mars
 
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Jacob is a part-time contributor for WhatCulture, specializing in music, movies, and really, really dumb humor.