I legitimately want to know! I am not even talking about J-pop from games like Persona rather I'm actually referring to games like Phantasy Star Online 2 & Universe ("Hello" & "With You" respectfully) thouse songs did NOT sound like traditional VGM I thought VGM was my escape from these kinds of songs but I guess not so why is game music suddenly being invaded by sappy love songs (which is the very thing I'm trying to get away from)?!
Could it have something to do with the rise of vocal VGM plus the fact that PSO2 & PSU are epic-scale games with a deep story?
Also I'm surprised the song "The Concept of Love" from Jet Set Radio isn't this kind of song despite it having "love" in the title! It's probably the biggest example of "looks can be deceiving" & "don't judge a book by it's cover"!
With the exception of the aforementioned J-pop in Persona & various other non-romantic vocal VGM I think vocal game music was the WORST thing to happen to the genre!
EDIT: I'm pretty sure the progenitor of this at least for Sega but possibly VGM as a whole was the song "Dreams Dreams" from NIGHTS into Dreams (which is an over-rated song BTW)