There’s a Song About “I Love You 3000” and I Have Some Thoughts

I am but a lowly fangirl who loves a good father/daughter storyline in a movie, hence why I loved Tony and Morgan Stark so much in Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame. So, color me shocked when I discovered a song titled “I Love You 3000” that features a beautiful reference to the now-famous line, but is about the singer wanting … someone to ask her to marry him while also wearing a Hulk shirt. (It’s a wild time, trust me.)

But, the problem is that this song is so catchy, and I’m so mad because the part of my brain that wants to be mad about it also keeps singing, and thus, I’m stuck in a cycle of yelling about how “I love you 3000” was a line shared between a father and daughter but then also singing the chorus of this song. So please, everyone, suffer with me. Listen to this song. Enjoy.

Now that we’re all on the same page … it’s fascinating, right!? This isn’t the first time that a song will be made out of something in the pop culture zeitgeist, and it certainly won’t be the last, but it is wonderfully fun to look at a song like Stephanie Poetri’s “I Love You 3000” and examine how our appreciation for something can bleed into our own creative works. That isn’t really surprising since there’s plenty of fanfiction turned into standalone properties out there that openly admit to starting as the fanfiction of another story (Fifty Shades of Grey being one of the biggest examples).

What’s so interesting to me about this isn’t necessarily that it is a fun song about Avengers: Endgame that has to do with arguably the saddest part of that entire movie, but rather, that this is the kind of pop culture references we can now get out of our art. Whether it’s through fan art or writing stories or, as Stephanie Poetri did, writing songs, all of us as fans can use what inspires us about our favorite things to create our own art.

So sure, in the grand scheme of things, I do not like that a song is using a quote about a father and daughter to talk about a marriage (it just feels weird to me), but then, yet again, I am singing along to it and love it because it reflects back on a series and character moment that I truly love.

We can all find joy in our favorite things and have them push us in our own creative endeavors, and it also helps when it has a catchy chorus that we can all sing along to.

(image: Marvel Entertainment)

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