“Love” Songs…Could We Do Better?

Last updated on: July 31, 2026 at 9:53 am by David Weiss

“Love” Songs…Could We Do Better? 2026-07-31T09:53:45-04:00 David Weiss

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Young couple kissing by the dashboard light

Image generated and manipulated by the author using Photoshop AI

Who Is This Song About?

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was sitting in a church for worship, and we went into a “worship” song, that made me shake my head. You see, I knew some of the origins of the song, and I knew it wasn’t a song written to God. It was a song the guy wrote about his girlfriend. The guy was a Christian artist and let me make this clear, I have no problem with him writing a song about his girlfriend, after all, we Christians are supposed to be multiple dimensional beings. While ideally faith should shape and inform every part of our lives, but there is more to our lives than our faith.

The Other Side…

The other side of this hit me yesterday. I was listening to a classic rock station, and a song came on that I haven’t heard in a while. It was a song I really liked, and I was in my car singing along. That is until I hit the line that said, “I remember we learned about love in the back of a Chevrolet.” To be clear I knew it was in there, for a long time a line like that wouldn’t have phased me. I was the target market for a song like this, a teen or young adult male, still, to quote, Johnny Lee “looking for ‘love’ in all the wrong places.” Needless to say I see it different now, and that’s when it hit me.

Who Informs You On Love?

So much of our formative years were informed by love songs that have very little to do with love. These are songs written largely by young men who are in a different city every night, with a different girl every night. They’re writing songs about ‘love’ but as Tina Turner once said, “What’s love got to do with it?” The answer is in a lot of cases, very little. Think about those songs, for a moment, but not too long, lest you be led astray. From Bob Seger’s Night Moves to John Mellencamp’s Jack and Diane to the cautionary tale of Meat Loaf’s Paradise By the Dashboard Light, we see the idealization of relational chaos all wrapped up under the category, “love songs.” In case you forgot what these songs actually say, I linked them all to lyric videos.

The Power of Music

Think about it. For many of us these songs (yes, I know I am dating myself) really colored our adolescent picture of love, and not much has changed. I think it’s safe to say music hasn’t gotten more godly over the years. Song’s stick with us. In my ministry, I’ve witnessed people in the throes of dementia, who can still remember every word of their favorite songs. Music is incredibly powerful. It can shape our views on life, and, truth be known it has. I’m not speaking out for censorship here. Free speech is a beautiful thing, and artists should be able to create what they want. What I am saying is we need to do better at deciding who gets to sow into out minds and what seeds they get to sow.

Guard Your Heart, Guard Your Family

Further, we need to be watching what messages get into the hearts and minds of our children. When I was in youth ministry, there was a huge emphasis on True Love Waits, the idea of waiting for marriage. Today many people, even in the church, see that as antiquated, and I can’t help but wonder why. Has God’s Word changed? If it did I missed the memo. If you see it as antiquated, maybe you need to listen to Paradise By the Dashboard Light one more time, but this time picture a young man singing it to your daughter, or picture your son “praying for the end of time…”

God’s Pattern

God’s pattern for relationships is pretty clearly described in the second chapter of the first book of the Bible. Genesis 2:24 says, Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Step one, a man needs to leave his parents home, This means he needs job and a place to live. Then he needs to find a wife and marry her and it’s only after those steps are complete that the “one flesh stuff” begins. All these “love” songs that get the steps out of order are at least one of the causes of the relational chaos all around us. Maybe we need better love songs.

We Need Better Love Songs

We need more songs about lasting love. How about songs about how love endures the trials of life, of sticking together through thick and thin? We need artists to sing about the blessings of committed long term marriages, and about why God’s way in relationships is the best way. Conversely Christians need to accept that every Christian song does not have to be a worship song. Further we need worship leaders to know the difference between worship songs and love songs. We need Christians to stop viewing Christian artists who have crossover success into the mainstream as suspect. The reason for thesis simple. These messages need to go beyond the church, and we need the Christian artists who do get such success to keep remembering they represent Jesus.

In short, we need more songs like this one, and we need them in every genre for every age. We need better love songs.

General Christian

Creative Arts Ministry

About Dave Weiss

Dave Weiss, SDG is a pastor and a traveling speaker. He has written and/or illustrated many self-published books and has his MDIV and DMIN, both with a concentration in Creative Arts Ministry. His latest creation is The Imaginative Church YouTub Channel, that features AI generated songs, The Simple Truth inspirational devotional videos and more. He is married to his wife Dawn and has two adult sons and a grandson named David. You can read more about the author here. You can read more about the author here. You can read more about the author here.

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