The Worst Songs to Play During a Father-Daughter Wedding Dance

Just as guests patiently endure long church weddings between atheists who are appeasing their religious bill-footing parents in order to get to the real fun at the reception, so too have we endured a terrible-ass spring to arrive where we are now, at fun-ass wedding season. And, as such, to the perennial awkwardness of the father-daughter dance.

The Father-Daughter wedding dance (or “Daddy-Daughter” for the purity ball set) at its core represents a handing off of responsibility (“vagina”) of a woman from one man (a dad) to another (a husband). Sure, you can argue that your specific wedding,it was just a way for you and your dad to goof around in front of everyone with coordinated sunglasses and Macarena-ing and that your husband is so feminist that he empathy-menstruates with you every month, but none of that changes the fact that wedding ceremonies, historically speaking, have represented something that today most people with internet connections would consider ultra creepy. I’m not arguing that anyone should stop having weddings, or stop dancing with their dad to Edelweiss and make everyone in the whole ballroom cry — first of all, I’m too tired to care that hard about what the fuck people do with their weddings, and secondly, the older the tradition, the more likely it comes from something our ancestors did or believed in the past that would be viewed as socially unacceptable today. So carry on with your Daddy-Daughter Dancing. Or don’t.

Most songs are wildly inappropriate for a Father-Daughter dance; when I asked my coworker Madeleine what song she thought was the least appropriate, she suggested “Too Close,” that 90’s R&B song about a dude getting a boner on the dance floor that contains the lyric “I feel a little poke comin’ throoooough. On yoooouuu.” But because of its creepy origins, Father-Daughter dance is an especially tricky thing to pull off without weirding all of the guests out (a quick google for “father daughter dance creepy” reveals 16 million results); any songs that could possibly be construed as expressing romantic or sexual love will probably be received with uncomfortable sidelong glances rather than approving applause. At the same time, songs that have nothing to do with love or affection don’t quite do it, either. The ideal father-daughter dance song would be significant to the bride and her father and convey to the audience a relationship between a parent and child without crossing the line.

With that in mind, here are the songs that come tantalizingly close to actually being perfect for a father-daughter dance before overshooting perfect and landing far, far, far in the hinterlands of WhatTheFuckistan. Of course, if you wanted to really own it, a daring bride could play all of these just to scare her guests into leaving before they wheel the cake out.

John Mayer- Daughters

Aphex Twin- Come to Daddy

Butterfly Kisses

This song is theoretically about a father’s sweet affection for his daughter, but goddamn does it lay it on too thick. If my dad told me this song reminded him of me, I’d patiently explain to my dad that I only like him as a friend.

George Michael- Father Figure

Look: this is an amazing song.