'Miles Ryan stood on the back porch of his house, smoking a cigarette.' Photo by .īut there is such a thing as loving someone a skosh too much. Stroking their hair as they fall asleep while you whisper the complete works of Nicholas Sparks into their ear.

There's nothing wrong with loving someone. Here's why it's actually really, really unromantic: Hippies, likely on their way to a mud frolic. If you're a video editor compiling footage of grainy hippies frolicking in the mud and you're not underscoring it with the opening chords of 'God Only Knows,' you are doing it wrong. If you're lazily bumping a beach ball over a volleyball net and 'God Only Knows' isn't playing somewhere in the back of your mind, you need to rethink the choices that got you to this point. If you're traipsing through a meadow in a sundress with your beloved and not playing 'God Only Knows' on your iPod, you should really stop and start over. Here's why it sounds romantic: I may not always love you Youth! Youth! Youth! Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images. A landscape of haunted innocence with some of the most heartrending lyrics ever committed to the back of a surfboard.

A lush garden of soft horns and breezy melody. When it comes to The Beach Boys, 'God Only Knows' is where it's at. You can keep your 'Surfin' Safaris,' your 'I Get Arounds,' and your 'Help me Rhondas.' Here are six love songs that sound romantic but aren't, and one song that doesn't sound romantic but totally is: 1. And they give us terrible, terrible ideas about how actual, real-life human relationships should work. They inspire us to take risks and put our feelings on the line. And 50 hours of community service later, you're still not back together. That time you held that boom box over your head outside your ex's house? You did that because of a love song.

Song lines with images