Villain Love Song

"Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches
Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches, Peaches
I lo-ove you, oh!"

"Laundry day, see you there
Under things, tumbling
Want to say, 'Love your hair'
Here I go... mumbling
With my freeze ray, I will stop the world"

—Dr. Horrible, "My Freeze Ray", from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

The song sung by a villain who is attempting to seduce another character. Hence, this trope is closely related to Seduction Lyric — but a Seduction Lyric isn't always put in the mouth of a villain, or even sung, and not all Villain Love Songs are clear attempts at immediate sexual seduction.

A Villain Love Song is generally not a full-blown Villain Song — hey, the villain's trying to impress someone, and blatantly reveling in puppy-punting has a knack for driving away potential love interests (but then again, they may have trouble understanding that). Villains in love with other villains go under Unholy Matrimony.

Contrast Final Love Duet. Often overlaps with Obsession Song, but not always.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• "Silent Voice", the second OP from Mobile Suit Gundam ZZ. It's a Villain Song from Haman Khan's point of view about her complicated feelings for Judau Ashta. Also an "I Want" Song.

Fan Works

• In a scene inspired by the example in Frozen (2013), Prince Jewelius sings "Love is in Bloom" with Twilight Sparkle as they're bonding in the second chapter of Loved and Lost. When Jewelius (now Equestria's king) reveals his crimes and true sociopathic nature to Twilight's disgraced friends, brother and mentor in the 11th chapter, he jokingly mentions the song's title when he tells them that Twilight (whom he has manipulated to renounce her loved ones and wants to bear him powerful heirs) has accepted his proposal to become his queen.

Films — Animated

• "Love is an Open Door" from Frozen (2013) is an unusual variation, since Hans was never in love with Anna and was actually lying and manipulating her into believing that he was, meaning that it seems like a regular love song at first and then simultaneously becomes and subverts this trope in hindsight.
• "Hellfire" from the Disney adaption of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a strange Villain Love Song that is also a Villain Song, an "I Want" Song, and an Obsession Song - with a bit of Sanity Slippage Song for good measure. It's that awesome.
• Though (hopefully) not a sexual kind of love being promised, "Trust in Me" from The Jungle Book (1967), sung by Kaa the snake as he tries to lull Mowgli into a false sense of security and eat him.
• "Don't Make Me Laugh" from The Pebble and the Penguin especially qualifies...
  "So right this way to the Drake estate or write your epitaph
  You choose your fate
  Don't make me wait
  And baby... don't make me laugh!!!!!!"
• From South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, we get a different example: the movie's real villain, Saddam Hussein, seducing Anti-Villain Satan into taking him back so that Saddam can take over Earth. It Makes Sense in Context.
• Strange Magic uses "C'mon Marianne" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to serve this purpose.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Bowser's love ballad to Princess Peach, aptly titled, "Peaches", is this. He starts it off during the movie while he's alone only to get interrupted by Kamek while the other half can be heard during The Stinger.

Films — Live-Action

• Disney's 1961 film version of Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland features the Crooked Little Man Mr. Barnaby (Ray Bolger) attempting to seduce Mary Contrary (Annette Funicello) with the song Castle in Spain.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: The Baron's Bomburst's song to his Baroness wife, "You're My Little Chu-Chi Face". He spends the whole song trying to kill her.
• The title song from GoldenEye qualifies (despite having nothing to do with the actual motives of the film's villain) as does the one from The World Is Not Enough. The latter, however, is only apparent after the film's major reveal.
• "As the World Falls Down" and "Within You" from Labyrinth, though the latter is more "If I can't have you, why should I bother existing!"
• While it could be said that anytime Frank-N-Furter is singing in The Rocky Horror Picture Show he's seducing someone, the show has an interesting subversion in "Touch-a Touch-a Touch-a Touch Me" where Janet sings a song about how the bad doctor seduced her, and how it changed her — to the point that she's now seducing Rocky.

Live-Action TV

• "What You Feel" from the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Musical Episode.
  • Plus played with to some extent Spike's "Rest in Peace".
• Deconstructed by "I Love You (As Much As Someone Like Me Can Love Anyone)" from Galavant, where Madalena tells her former lover, the titular Galavant, who's still head-over-heels for her, that she loves... how gorgeous they look together, the sex, and how he compliments her and waits on her hand and foot. For someone like her, that's as close as it gets.
• Interview with the Vampire (2022): Daniel Hart's "Come to Me" was sung by Sam Reid, and it's Lestat de Lioncourt's love song for Louis de Pointe du Lac. In "Like Angels Put in Hell by God", Lestat had composed it as a Valentine's Day present and an Apology Gift for his boyfriend, whom he's trying to win back after brutally assaulting him.
  Come to me
  And let my ever-loving arms surround you
  Come to me
  And let my infinite embrace confound you
  We'll mourn each other
  Like star-crossed lovers
  Your Pelléas, my Mélisande
  Oh, come to me
  Come to me
  
  Come to me
  I get intoxicated by the very air of you
  Come to me
  I'm so infatuated with the grand affair of you
  We'll ruin each other
  Like star-crossed lovers
  Your Pelléas, my Mélisande
  Oh, come to me
  Come to me
  Come to me
  Come to me
• Mystery Science Theater 3000 had Dr. Forrester sing "Who Will I Kill?" about TV's Frank after the latter's ascension to a higher plane of existence. It's pretty suggestive.
• "Come Melt into Me" from the Xena: Warrior Princess Musical Episode. Turns into We Can Rule Together towards the end.

Music

• Black Sabbath's "N.I.B." probably qualifies, since the narrator is apparently Satan.
• "Skullcrusher Mountain" by Jonathan Coulton is about a villainous Mad Scientist confessing his (implicitly genuine) love for his female captive.
• "Crown of Ice" in Steeleye Span's Wintersmith album, based on a book of the same name from Discworld, is sung by the Wintersmith after he's taken Tiffany to the Ice Palace:
  This is my world, but it could be ours,
  I asked you once and I asked you twice,
  To be my bride in the crystal kingdom,
  You look so pretty in a crown of ice.
• Goethe's poem Der Erlkönig has been set to music by many composers, but Schubert's version features a particularly beautiful and chilling melody from the Erlking to the young boy, meant to entice him. His final lines, translated:

  "I love you, your beautiful form entices me,

  And if you're not willing, I shall use force."

• Inverted by The Megas with "Don't Mess with Magnet Man", which takes place after the villain's won and then lost the girl, and wants her back, but the more immediate problem is her heavily-armed brother.
• "Villainous Thing" by Shayfer James is a love song directed at the narrator's crush, trying to persuade them to give into the dark side as well, because it's so much more fun.
  Waste no worry for the world,
  let it be a tragedy of love and glory.
  While they wait by gates of pearl,
  we'll be building palaces in purgatory!
  Oh, dear, let me see those smokey eyes.
  'Cause you're a villainous thing,
  and we can't have you living a lie...
• Wednesday 13 and his associated acts have quite a bit. To name a few:
  • "Love at First Fright" is a love song to Regan from The Exorcist, from the perspective of the demon possessing her.
  • "Ghoul of My Dreams" is a somewhat campy vampire confessing his love.
  • "Happily Ever Cadaver" takes this for a bizarre twist, in that it is about a transvestite grave robber swooning over the latest corpse he's dug up. And, yes, the POV character is explicitly stated to be a transvestite.
• "Partners in Crime" from Set It Off is about a couple who appear to be serial back robbers who boast that, no matter what, they'll never be taken alive and will be together forever.
• The Chalkeaters' "Bowsette" is partly sung from the perspective of the titular character, proclaiming that all her evil schemes are attempts to get Mario's affection, and that Princess Peach doesn't really care about him, but she does.
• MANY Vocaloid songs are this. Most are Yandere Obsession Songs but some are just straight examples, such as MARETU’s Suji about an Ax-Crazy person’s love for their partner, who they just killed. And they still love them.
• Nick Cave has several of those:
  • "Where the Wild Rose Grow" (duet with Kylie Minogue) from Murder Ballads. A woman called Elisa Day mutually falls in love with a man who will later kill her so her beauty would never fade. Half of the lyrics follow his point of view.
  • "Henry Lee" (duet with PJ Harvey) from the same album (though it is actually a cover/interpretation of an already existing folk song). Once again the song has POV's of both the villain and it's lover/victim. The titular Henry Lee is killed by a woman who does not want to lose him to "another girl".
  • "Deanna" is has her lover's POV. It seems to lean to Bonnie-and-Clyde style romance this time.

Theatre

• Assassins has "Unworthy of Your Love", sung by John Hinckley to Jodie Foster and Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme to Charles Manson.
• "Special" from Avenue Q.
• "Me" from the stage version of Beauty and the Beast.
• "My Love" from Candide.
• The Snake from Children of Eden has a song tempting Eve to eat the apple called "In Pursuit of Excellence". Different in that the snake is played by a harmonizing quartet and the entire song consists of inspirational catchphrases ripped from motivational posters.
• "Lost and Found" from City of Angels.
• "Bolero Di Amor" from Copacabana.
• "Whatever Lola Wants" from Damn Yankees.
• Pepe Cibrián's Dracula musical has both "Dracula's Love Theme" and "My Sweet Mina".
• Frank Wildhorn's version of Dracula is full of these:
  • "Forever Young" (the three Brides to Jonathan Harker)
  • "Life After Life" (Dracula and Lucy; it only sort of fits because by this point Dracula sees Lucy as purely the "spearhead" of his plans for vampire conquest and addresses her more like a father/creator than a lover)
  • "You Already Love Me/Please Don't Make Me Love You" Dracula and Mina.
• "Die Schatten werden länger (Reprise)" from Elisabeth is Death and Rudolf's seduction duet. Death also sings "Der letzte Tanz" to gloat to Elisabeth that she loves him despite marrying Franz Joseph, as well as dueting "Wenn ich tanzen will" with Elisabeth to insist that she's playing straight into his hands because they are so alike.
  • From the Takarazuka Revue production, we have "Ai to Shi no Rondo" and its reprise, in which Death sings about, respectively, his Love at First Sight for Sisi, and his frustration at being unable to claim her affection. It made its way back into the German version as a duet between Death and Elisabeth, "Rondo - schwarzer Prinz".
• Evil Dead The Musical sets this trope to happy circus music in "Join Us" and again in "Housewares Employee (Reprise)".
• Evita has two. "I'd Be Surprisingly Good for You", in which Eva Duarte meets future husband and budding politician Juan Peron, and convinces him that they'd be perfect for each other. She's shamelessly manipulating him, as she does for their entire marriage - if he knows yet depends on the production. And then there's "Waltz for Eva and Che", which isn't quite a love song as much as Eva and Che manipulating and sniping at each other's perceived faults.
• Inverted in The Golden Apple, where Helen sings "Lazy Afternoon" to Silent Antagonist Paris.
• "You'll Be Back" from Hamilton is this on an international scale, with King George III trying to win back an estranged America's love... by sending legions of troops over to squash the revolution.
• "Our Love Is God" and "Meant to Be Yours", from Heathers. The former starts very softly, like a very sweet love song, but slowly gets more ominous as JD actually kills Kurt and Ram, to Veronica's horror. In the latter you have JD begging Veronica not to fight with him anymore and telling her that they're meant to be together, while simultaneously threatening to kill her for leaving him and detailing his plan to blow up their high school.
• "Hello, Little Girl" and "Any Moment" from Into the Woods.
• "A Dangerous Game" from Jekyll & Hyde.
• "September Song" from Knickerbocker Holiday is an early example.
• "Nos Corps à la Dérive" ("Our Drifting Bodies") from the French musical La Légende du Roi Arthur has Méléagant singing to the kidnapped and chained Guenièvre about how he loves and desires her - even going so far as to say her scorn doesn't bother him, because he loves that, too. Guenièvre repudiates his advances, after which he attempts to rape her, though he's interrupted by the arrival of Lancelot.
• In a weird twist of Plant/Human Relations, "Feed Me" From Little Shop of Horrors qualifies as Audrey II seduces Seymour with images of money, power, and love.
  • And later, the plant does the same thing to Audrey. Right before it tries to eat her.
• Inverted in The Mikado: the meek Ko-Ko courts the terrifying antagonist Katisha in a duet they sing about how there is beauty in scary things like storms and fierce animals.
• "The Name of Love" from The Mystery of Edwin Drood certainly counts. Bonus: it's a duet between the villain and the unwilling target of his affections.
• "Etre pretre et aimer une femme" (Frollo about Esmeralda) from Notre-Dame de Paris.
  • He also has "Tu Vas Me Détruire", which is basically the play equivalent of "Hellfire".
• A Long List from The Phantom of the Opera:
  • "The Mirror"
  • "The Music of the Night"
  • "Wandering Child"
  • "Point of No Return"
  • "Down Once More"
• "If You Could See You" from Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical is this. The scene starts with Cave Johnson confessing his love to Caroline, and ends with Cave ordering Caroline to be put in a computer against her will.
  Cave: I understand your objection / But, yes or no, we'll begin / If you could see you through my eyes... Well... Say goodbye, Caroline.
• Another Wildhorn example: In The Scarlet Pimpernel, Chauvelin sings "Where's the Girl?" to Maugerite in an attempt to rekindle their old romance as well as to remind her of their mutual passion for The French Revolution. She rejects him.
• In The Scarlet Sails, there is "You Are Not Like Everyone Else" (Ты не такая, как все), where Menners Jr. confesses his love for Assol and tries to convince her to accept him at least as a Meal Ticket. The song is actually very touching, especially since Assol is a persona non grata, believed crazy in the village, and the mere fact that Menners loves her precisely for being different from the others says something about the man's sincerity. However, this happens right after he tells Assol that agreeing to marry him is the only way she can save her father from prison. Needless to say, in every production Assol reacts very coldly to his love confession, no matter how tenderly it's sung.
• In Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, "A Little Priest" may fall under this, as it is a villain seducing the hero. The thing is, it's Sweeney who is being, er, "seduced" by Mrs. Lovett to go with her idea. "By the Sea" and her part of "My Friends" sit in this trope a bit more firmly (although see the Dr. Horrible example above.)
  • A probably better example would be Turpin's "Johanna", in which he's not directly singing to her (similar to the Dr. Horrible examples), but is expressing his extreme lust for her.
• Herbert's part in "Wenn Liebe in dir ist" from Tanz Der Vampire can be seen as one of these, in his own special way. (This largely depends on the ratio of woobieness to pervertedness he's played with.) More straightforwardly, there's practically all of Graf von Krolock's musical interaction with Sarah.
  • And considering what happens to Sarah, her Final Love Duet with Alfred may qualify as this on her side too. (The fact that Sarah likes all of her interaction with Krolock, and is not particularly nice to begin with in her own right, makes all of her singing a bit morally ambiguous as well...)
    • Magda (victim who decides she likes a debatable villain) and Chagal's (said debatable villain) song in their shared coffin may also count.
    • Can we safely decide that Tanz likes its villainous love songs? And its villains.
    • It says a lot about the show that the audience typically thinks of the Hunter as a douchebag by the end of it, and not only as a result of Misaimed Fandom. You're supposed to like the vampires.
• Thrill Me has "There's Nothing Like a Fire", which is Richard singing about how sexually exciting Richard finds arson. Nathan doesn't need much convincing. There are also several other songs that fall under this trope—"A Written Contract" is Richard convincing Nathan to continue being his accomplice by offering a contract that would require Richard to have sex with him; "Supeior" is Richard bragging about their crimes to get Nathan into bed; and "Keep Your Deal with Me" culminates in Richard making out with Nathan to stop Nathan turning them in. Additionally, "Roadster" isn't this, since Richard has no interest in the boy he's singing to, but Richard is using his charms to convince the boy it's safe to take a ride with him, so it's written—and occasionally performed—in approximately this style.

Web Animation

• Helluva Boss has Moxxie serenades his wife, Millie with a song titled after her, "Oh Millie", about how much he loves her murderous ways. Rare case where both parties are evil.

Webcomics

• Brawl in the Family has "A Simple Request", a song sung by Ganondorf about his love for...the Triforce.

Web Original

• While the heroine seemed to be unable to hear either song "My Freeze Ray" and parts of "Brand New Day" from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog fit this.
  • It's not just that the heroine isn't moved... it's that she doesn't even know.
  • Crosses into Stalker with a Crush territory in "My Eyes"
  • Considering Dr. Horrible's Perspective Flipped outlook, Captain Hammer's part of "A Man's Gotta Do" might also fit this.
• "Crooked" from Helluva Boss, sang by the imp Fizzorolli and Asmodeus, demon king of the Ares Geotia noble family and deadly sin of lust

Western Animation

• Conversely Ice Queen manages to do that disguised as Prince Gumball in Adventure Time episode "Adventure Time with Fionna and Cake".
  • Ice King practices singing to Princess Bubblegum in "I Remember You". The song starts out kind of sweet about how he likes her the best of all the princesses, quickly starts sounding a little creepy, but becomes heart-wrenching near the end, when Ice King admits that he has become desperate for somebody, anybody, to keep him from feeling lonely or at least help him understand why nobody likes him.
  • The trend continues in Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake where Candy Queen gets the equally creepy "Baked with Love".
• Avenger Penguins has 'Slime Girl', a song sung by the main villain's sidekick Harry Slime about his dream girl. It has some...pleasant images.
• "If Only" in the Musical Episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold is actually a Love Triangle duet. The villainous portion is sung by Music Meister about his adoration of Black Canary, while the heroic portion is by Black Canary about her crush on Batman. Canary reacts in horror when she realizes they've been singing 'in tune' together and rejects Meister at the end of the song.
• The third season premiere of The Lion Guard contains a unique example in that the song is the villain singing about the hero he feels is trying to seduce him to the side of good. "New Way To Go" is all about Janja trying to figure out his feelings for Jasiri, wrestling with how she's changed him and gotten inside his head, and resisting the urge to "say yes instead of no" to her. His expressions and body language throughout the Disney Acid Sequence demonstrate how badly he wants to get closer to her but keeps holding himself back, and the Jasiri in his fantasy looks and acts flirtatious to downright seductive as she tries (and fails) to get him to join her. He completes his Heel–Face Turn by the end of the episode.
• Dr. Blowhole from The Penguins of Madagascar manages to win the heart of a... mutated evil music player with a song by the name of '"Porpoise Power Ballad"'. Blowhole is voiced by Neil Patrick Harris so it's no surprise that one of his villainous voice roles would break out in song.
• Demencia from Villainous breaks into one during the final orientation video after being bombarded with questions about why she's in love with Black Hat. She answers, to the tune of Habanera.
• The Phineas and Ferb episode "Chez Platypus" closes off with Doofenshmirtz and his recently found date, who shares the same interests in evil as him, singing a tune proclaiming the evil love they have for each other.
  It's the age-old story, how an evil boy meets an evil girl.
  We've got a love strong enough to rule the whole wide world.
  We both maniacally laugh, at all the same stuff.
  You can't foil a plan that's built upon evil love!

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