"THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL." BtVS Intertext/Allusion.
In the student talent show in "The Puppet Show" (Season One), Cordelia decides to sing ‘The Greatest Love of All’ (a huge hit for both George Benson and Whitney Houston) thereby revealing her self-obsessed nature as the song is about loving yourself.
As Janet Halfyard notes there is an ironic contrast between her apparent sophistication and rather awkward stage presence (not to mention her terrible singing). The following dialogue is taken from the Buffy Dialogue Database:
CORDELIA: (singing, badly) Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all. I decided long ago... ...never to walk in anyone's shadow. If I fail, if I succeed, at least...
GILES: (interrupts) Thank you, Cordelia. Tha-that's going to be lovely.
CORDELIA: But I didn't do the part with the sparklers!
GILES: Um, w-we'll, um... save that for the dress rehearsal.
The song recurs in an intertextual nod for fans of both shows in the Angel episode ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ (Season Four) when an amnesiac Cordelia sings it so that Lorne can read her. However, she does now need to learn to love herself and know herself once more.
Halfyard, Janet K., 2002. ‘Singing their hearts out: performance, sincerity and musical diegesis in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel, paper presented at ‘Blood, Text and Fears: Reading Around Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ conference, University of East Anglia, Norwich, 19-20 October 2002