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The Darkness' 2003 single "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" is without a doubt a silly song, and it's also the band's biggest hit. Only one of those things was intentional.
During an interview with The Guardian, brothers Dan and Justin Hawkins admitted that their intention was to "write the stupidest song ever."
“I can’t remember who said it, but we were having a conversation along the lines of, ‘Why don’t we just write the stupidest song ever?’” Dan divulged. “I expected us all to feel embarrassed playing it. But everyone was singing along to the chorus the second time it came around. We looked at each other and thought, 'This is it. It’s staying.'”
Justin remembered their manager saying “that’s a hit, that is,” after hearing it at a rehearsal. “We didn’t labor over it,” he recalled. “We didn’t toil and look for the ultimate riff. I was just following my fingers, really. … Things that are cartoonish and ridiculous – that’s my raison d’etre. The ridiculous things that the Darkness do are tempered by Dan’s actual good taste. For me to be turned on, it’s got to have something in it that makes him go, ‘You can’t do that.’”
He added that he “was almost on a pathological quest to put ‘love’ in every single song. Bands were afraid to actually talk about love. But the huge songs, the ones that really get you in the heart, they’re actually talking about it and they’re using the word 'love.' I’m always in love, that’s the reality. It’s one of the first and most abiding addictions of my life.”