In the long history of love songs the attention of a beautiful woman has been compared to many things – but perhaps only in Pakistan's tribal belt would it be likened to the deadly missile strike of a remotely controlled US drone.

In a sign of how the routine hunting down and killing of militants by unmanned CIA planes has leached into the popular imagination, drones have been given a starring role in a new romantic song.

In most respects the track, which is proving popular in the largely Pashtun city of Peshawar, is faithful to standard themes of the genre. The lyrics mention rosebuds and wine. o blaring music it celebrates the allures of a temptress with "sweet lips" and a "smile fresh as early dew" which "ensnares lovers with amorous pangs".

Then the repeated chorus: "My gaze is as fatal as a drone attack".

The hit for singer Sitara Younis follows her success last year with another love ballad, which warns a besotted man to keep his distance: "Don't chase me, I'm an illusion, a suicide bomb."

Khalid Shah Jilani, the professional driver and part-time lyricist who penned the song for a fee of £60, said singers and poets are increasingly taking inspiration from the situation in their provinces.

"It's been a hit because people like the music and the movie that it was written for," he said. "Now you hear it all the time being played at wedding halls and in cars."

Younis's energetic performance of the song had been racking up a healthy number of hits on YouTube before the video sharing site was shut down by the government on Monday, amid rising public anger over the blasphemous film by anti-Islam activists in the US.

Maas Khan Wesal, a Pashtu music veteran who wrote the accompanying music, said the drone reference had nothing to do with politics, but simply the fact that the "eyes of a beautiful dancing girl are so powerful they are like a drone, they can destroy men".

He said the song had proved popular because it reflected the lives of Pashtu speakers on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

"Other people are more political," he said, citing the example of singer Hashmat Sahir. "He sings to tell people that people should not carry out terrorist activities in Peshawar whilst the war in Afghanistan is still going on."

Although music, particularly at once-lively wedding ceremonies, is actively suppressed in areas of the semi-autonomous tribal areas where the Taliban (and drones) are most active, it flourishes in the frontier city of Peshawar.

"In the last five years we have suffered a lot of losses because of this war," said Bakhtiar Khattack, a composer who owns his own recording studio in the city. "People hear about so many different incidents that it becomes part of their psyche.

"It is actually very destructive to our society that these things are being taken lightly and people are even dancing to these sorts of tunes."

The Express Tribune, which reported on the drone love song on Tuesday, said some critics believe such songs are so harmful to Pashtun culture that a board of censors should be set up to stop the material creating "a sense off disunity amongst the people".

The paper said: "All in all, the war on terror in these tribal areas has not only become a part of their art, literature and cinema but even the Pashto tele-films, which are famous for vulgarity and Kalashnikov culture."