Holidazed Celebrate Valentine’s Day with A.V. Club Milwaukee’s “Love Stinks” week

In a crucial scene from the 1998 neo-realist classic The Wedding Singer, Adam Sandler’s titular crooner hijacks a happy couple’s happy day by belting out a cover of The J. Geils Band’s “Love Stinks.” Just how much does Sandler—and The J. Geils Band, apparently—loathe this thing we call love? Well, any song that opens with the awkward lament “You love her / But she loves him / And he loves somebody else / You just can’t win,” isn’t exactly a contender for Time Life’s “Romancing The Early ’80s” 10-CD collection.

Which brings us to this week’s kinda-sorta holiday: Valentine’s Day. It’s a special time of year when lovers and spouses alike shower each other with gifts, affection, and hard-to-come-by dinner reservations. But, if you’re like Sandler, The J. Geils Band, and us, you’d rather bury your head in the snow than think about love. That’s why we’re celebrating “Love Stinks” week here at The A.V. Club. On Wednesday, we’re bringing you a list of “10 Milwaukee pop-culture heartbreaks,” including such cheery items as the closing of Oriental Drugs, the closing of The Globe East, and that time the city knocked down Sydney Hih for some reason. And for the special day itself, we’ve put together a delightfully bitter and depressing playlist of local songs that deal with love and love lost. The list features music from Milwaukee artists like Sat. Nite Duets, Lisa Gatewood, and Trapper Schoepp And The Shades, and serves as a nice reminder that you’re not alone in this brave fight against love and happiness. And so it goes, ’til the day you die: This thing they call love, it’s gonna make you cry. Pure poetry, J. Geils. Pure poetry.