Songfacts®:

• "Lovefool" was the song that propelled the Cardigans to international stardom. US listeners took notice when it was featured on the soundtrack to Baz Luhrmann's William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes. The song topped the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay and Top 40 Mainstream, but was kept from the Hot 100 because it was not issued as a commercial single (until December 1998, songs were not eligible to chart on the Hot 100 until they released a single in the US).
• Lead singer Nina Persson penned the lyrics for this song, while guitarist Peter Svensson wrote the music. Persson was sitting in an airport waiting for a plane when she was inspired to write the song and thought it would have a "slow bossa nova feel." She told STIM (The Swedish Performing Rights Society): "I do find that the biggest hits are the ones that are the easiest to write."
• A graduation party gig would seem like a step down at this point, but not when it's for the college seniors on Beverly Hills, 90210. The Cardigans performed this song, along with "Been It," during the Roaring '20s-themed bash on the season 7 finale "Graduation Day: Part 2" in 1997.
• This was also featured on the soundtrack to the popular teen movie Cruel Intentions (1999).
• New Found Glory performed this song on their covers album From the Screen to Your Stereo Part II (2007).
• The American version of this video shows the journey of a message in a bottle sent from a man on a deserted island to his lover waiting on a faraway dock. The bottle not only contains a message, but the band performing inside. The European version shows Nina Persson spying on the man she loves until the end of the video when she confronts him with the lyrics "Say that you love me... go on and fool me."
• Svensson recalled writing the music for this song in an interview with The Independent: "To me, that song is still that moment when I wrote it in a small room, sitting on my bed in our home town. It was supposed to be some kind of a bossa nova: a totally different song, slow and mellow and sad. The production on it, though, and the disco drums made it all shinier."
• Actress and folk singer-songwriter Leighton Meester covered this during an appearance at the A.V. Club headquarters. She said: "I chose this song because I have always really liked it. It's ironic and really cute and sounds super fun, but it's also really desperate and I can relate."
• This was featured during a party scene on the TV series Orphan Black in the 2013 episode "Variations Under Domestication."
• In a season 3 episode of The Office ("Initiation"), Jim sings this to annoy Karen. Andy also sings the chorus in his interview and wonders whatever happened to the group.