"What's wrong with being sappy?" - Nigel Tufnel

e.g. Bread's "It Don't Matter to Me"

Equally plausible as meditation on unselfish self-sacrifice or of ugly, bullheaded martyrdom, both of which surely most of us have experienced to some degree in the relationships of our life--by extension, equally plausible as meditation on how we wish we could be vs. who we are.

George Jones' "He Stopped Loving Her Today" may well be the apotheosis of sappy, and I love it. It's got everything - sad harmonica, sad slide guitar, sad monologue backed by sad wordless backing vocals, and a spine-tingly string gliss which makes its first appearance two-thirds of the way through the song. The lyrics are heartbreaking. For me, at least, this brand of "good sappy" succeeds because it shoves all of these sappy elements in my face, forthrightly and (correctly) without shame, and dares me not to be affected.

Much of the above can also be applied to Spiritualized's "Let it come down".

disliking 'sappy' music = missing out on the pleasures of:
the Chi-Lites
the Delfonics
the Spinners
the Stylistics
etc

Extreme - "More Than Words"

and

Kate Winslet - "What If"

Both gorgeous. I know, I know.

I'm not so sure your first sentence is true, joe.

True, I guess that was awkwardly stated, because "the average popular music fan's estimation" is such a vague and limitless term. I meant to say something more like "average hardcore popular music fan's estimation (like folks here)". :)

I was envisioning more along the lines of the Jack Black character in High Fidelity ("There's no WAY your daughter likes that song. Go try the mall..."), versus, say, the average teenager gal swooning over Justin Timberlake...