18 Lovely Love Songs We Love to Love

You know. For Valentine's Day.

Here are our offerings of our favorite of the love song genre. Not all happy, not all sappy, but all indeed involving the "L" word. Our 18 favorites, to be exact.

Why 18? Because 19 would be ridiculous.

18) “Angel Eyes”—John Hiatt: This was the first dance for my wife and me at our wedding. Such a perfect tale of the underdog winning out. - DT

17) “Black Eyed Susan”—Paul Westerberg: What says "romance" more than a guy serenading a young junkie? Weird choice, I know, but the tenderness with which Westerberg treats the girl, while never shying away from the very real problems, gets me every time. And, of course, it's a lovely recording, suffused with that very late night/early morning feel from the very first sound. — SP

16) “If I Had $1,000,000”—Barenaked Ladies: Not-so-deep down it really is a pretty simple love song, all these things one would do for the woman (or man) he/she loves. And “I’d build a treefort in our yard; you could help, it wouldn’t be that hard” is just so adorable. – DT

15) "Martha My Dear"—The Beatles: Potentially the single most misogynistic song in the rock and roll catalog becomes instead an unbelievably sweet paean to the various kinds of love when you discover that Paul was (mainly) singing to his beloved sheepdog. Silly? You bet. But also overflowing with the kind of joy that can't be faked. — SP

14) “Because the Night”—Bruce Springsteen: No one said love couldn’t be desperate. This isn’t candies and flowers love. This is using your last dime at the payphone to desperately call her and tell her what you need to tell her love. – DT

13) "Wonderful Tonight"—Eric Clapton: Sure, it's overplayed to death. So what? Get past the fact that you've heard it a few hundred times more often than you'd have liked and you find a gorgeous melody caressing some of the sweetest lyrics ever, one of those few gushy gushy love songs that's not cloying. (And not just because the song's autobiographical and he was actually annoyed by how long she was taking to get ready when he wrote it...although, yes, that makes it even better.) — SP

12) “Golden Lady”—Stevie Wonder: “You Are the Sunshine Of My Life” is better known and equally brilliant. But Stevie never wrote a more beautiful song. And just think what a mouthful that statement is. – DT

11) "Freak Scene"—Dinosaur Jr: J Mascis seems to be one of rock's great misanthropes, which ain't no small feat. And yet this ode to his long-time, vitally important yet troubled friendship with bassist/singer Lou Barlow ("Sometimes I don't thrill you, sometimes I think I'll kill you, just don't let me fuck up, will you? 'cuz when I need a friend it's still you.") stands out as one of their sweetest songs, as well as the crunchiest rock and roll on this list. — SP

10) “The Luckiest”—Ben Folds: When you know, you know. Even if you’d never met, you still somehow know. Ben and his piano deliver the goods without lapsing at all into cheesiness. – DT

9) "Oh My Love"— John Lennon: The loveliest melody Lennon ever wrote—you heard me—set against an impossibly delicate musical backdrop, with his piano and George's guitar spun together like the most fragile gossamer, all married to simple lyrics that sound like an ancient Buddhist koan. — SP

8) “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”—Bob Dylan: Even when everything falls apart, love remains. “I’ll see you in the skies above, in the tall grass, in the ones I love” is a stunning sentiment. - DT




7) "The Heart of the Matter"—Don Henley: ...really? Don Henley? Hey, even a blind pig and all that, and in this case he found an Italian White Alba truffle. — SP

6) “Unsatisfied”—The Replacements: Sad as hell, to be sure. But you can only write something this lost and lonely if love was once there, and once meant an awful lot to you. – DT

5) "I've Been Waiting"—Matthew Sweet: In which the Brian Wilson of the post-punk era creates a simple love song that puts its hooks into your skin from the first moment and never lets go, pristine harmonies, funny lyrics and a searing guitar solo combining to perfectly encapsulate aurally the feel of new love after a long, lonely spell. — SP

4) “Woman”—John Lennon: Maybe not his most poignant love letter to Yoko (that would be “Oh My Love”) but it's his last one, and maybe his most direct. And that matters. A lot. – DT

3) "Two for the Road"—Bruce Springsteen: When Springsteen, long-time famous loner, invites someone along for the ride, you know that ain't an offer extended lightly. That the guy who wrote "Born to Run" seemed to finally be advocating for the deep-seated need for a partner ("I didn't see it coming but, girl, now I know it takes one for the running but two for the road") actually made me reconsider my plans for life. — SP

2) “All My Loving”—The Beatles: Sweet, pop, heartfelt and perfect. The Beatles have about 60 that would qualify for this list. I choose this one. – DT

1) "God Only Knows"—The Beach Boys: Simultaneously the most romantic and the most realistic take on love from a band still generally best known for their simple songs of fun, fun, fun. "If you should ever leave me, well, life would still go on, believe me." Bwah? No, no, no. That's not how love songs are supposed to go. "The world could show nothing to me, so what good would living do me?" Ah...there 'tis. Yes. If you leave me, I'm not going to just curl up and die, victorian notions and Harlequin romances to the contrary. But I might as well, since I could never, ever be happy again. Yeah. That. That's love. — SP

It's a Tragedy

So much bad music. So little time to mock it.

OK. As always I overstate. There is so, so much good music out there, in so many shapes and sizes and colors and forms.

But let’s face it—there’s some pretty bad dreck out there too. After all, John Mayer and ABBA are still working.

Again with the trashing of those two? Don’t you have better things to complain about, Dan?

Sure do. Because the type of song I am thinking about today was a particularly noxious genre, one that mercifully largely died out before either of us were born, yet still bubbles to the surface every once in awhile. Or at least did. Fortunately, with one remarkable exception (that to come later) the genre largely ceased to exist by the mid-70s.

I am talking about what was known as “The Tragedy Song.” Not songs about tragedies, mind you. Because there are too many wonderful tunes that deal with death and tragedy to really list here. But the list would certainly include “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll” and “For a Dancer” and “Wreck on the Highway” and even “Ziggy Stardust,” songs that all deal with tragic events and examine them through a lens of anger, regret, fear and the rest of the honest emotional spectrum. Many other examples of really good, really sad songs abound.

That’s not what this is about.

The “tragedy song” was a fad at the turn of the 50s into the 60s, and involved a perfect little story of a perfect little couple so totally and hopeless in love with each other. Only then, one of them dies. End of story.

Only it’s so not. Because here’s the thing—in every one of these songs, and mercifully there weren’t that many of them, but just enough to make it a legit fad—the way in which the person dies is so mindbendingly horrific and irredeemably stupid that the listener really can’t help but laugh at the idiocy. And what’s more, the songs are cloaked in layers and layers of maudlin sap and whiny pap. We’re kinda glad the person is dead because it means the song will soon be done, and we wouldn’t mind the narrator joining the dead love.

My dad was in college during this era and he has confirmed that, yes, these songs were huge and, yes, these songs were ridiculous. He even has a very funny story of a piano player in his fraternity house who turned one of these songs into a rollicking barroom singalong, which always got the room howling. Good!

Case in point is the Mt. Rushmore of musical tragiporn, “Teen Angel” by Mark Dinning in 1959. The couple is soooo very in love and soooo happy. Until one night when their car stalls on some railroad tracks, and a train is bearing down on them. They get out safely, only the girl goes running back and promptly gets crushed to death by the train barreling down the tracks. And why did she do something so stupid?

It really is kinda hard to believe.

What was it you were looking for?

That took your life that night?

They said they found my high school ring

Clutched in your fingers tight.

She ran back to get his high school ring. Which apparently meant so much to here she wasn’t even wearing it at the time!

Somewhere Charles Darwin heard this song—although only if he’s unfortunately in hell, which I doubt—and smiled, nodding. Survival of the fittest is working like a charm.

The song went to Number 1.

Then there was Ray Peterson’s “Tell Laura I Love Her” a year later, which went Top 10, although not to the very top, mercifully. Once again the couple is deeply in love, happy and smiley and ready to live forever. Only Tommy, the hero (for lack of a much, much better term), can’t afford to buy her an expensive wedding ring ($1,000!).

So he does what any sensible young man would do. Finds a cheaper ring? No. Gets a job to pay for it? No. Takes out a loan? Buys it on layaway?  Borrows from his parents??? No, no and NO, Mitt!!!

No, he does what any sensible young man would do. He enters an auto race to win the $1,000 first prize. You really had to ask?

What happens? C’mon, you know what happens!

No one knows what happened that day

How his car overturned in flames

But as they pulled his body from the twisted wreck

In his dying breath they could hear him say

“Tell Laura I love her…”

Also? Tell her Tommy was an idiot and she’s probably way, way better off.

There's plenty more, unfortunately.

In “The Last Kiss” (covered stridently decades later by Pearl Jam) awful driving is again the cause, this time the girl dies because her lover somehow couldn’t see a stalled car in the road up ahead. More bad driving takes the guy in “The Leader of the Pack,” which actually is quite musically enjoyable in the hands of the Shangri La’s, if you overlook the general overwrought silliness of the lyrics.

In Pat Boone’s hideous “Moody River” he arrives for a date to find out that his girl has inexplicably killed herself. Although she was dating Pat Boone so, well, I repeat myself. And in “Patches,” a girl named Patches kills herself and leaves her lover so very sad that Patches is dead. And gives no real reason. Although it possibly had something to do with her parents naming her “Patches.”

Again, it’s not that these are sad songs. Tons of amazing sad songs have been written over the years, ones that stay with us forever. It’s that these are melodramatic little soap operas, designed to lose us in the all-encompassing crippling gloom and not just tug at our heartstrings but to freaking tear the suckers out of our chest. They come with all the subtlety of a Yanni keyboard solo, and they are obnoxious in their efforts.

Fortunately, the trend began to die out by the mid-60s; maybe because the Kennedy assassinations and Vietnam War gave us real things to worry about. Or more likely just because the trend had run its course, just like disco did in the late 70s and glam metal would in the late 80s. (Both of which are preferable musical genres, BTW—yes, even glam metal).

But every once in a while the tragedy song would rear its ugly head again. Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey” in 1968 may very seriously be the Worst. Song. Ever. So misogynistic and manipulative and craven in literally every little awful corner of it. “Seasons in the Sun” in the early 70s is so whiny and intentional it leaves us openly rooting for the guy to die by the end of the song. And “Billy Don’t Be a Hero,” well, it's to anti-war songs what Karl Rove is to hip hop.

But, and here comes the big twist I have so clearly telegraphed, there is one song—released in 1992—that returns all of the conventions and pitfalls that once shaped the classic “tragedy song” motif. And actually works well.

Richard Thompson delivers beautifully with “1952 Vincent Black Lightning” because the song is what all those other songs are not—unsentimental, unflinching and unapologetic. James the Bad Guy knows he’s a bad guy and doesn’t care, much like the narrator of Eddie Cochrane’s legendary “Summertime Blues” (in my estimation the first true punk rock song) knows he’s a lazy little bastard but still doesn’t care.

What’s more, James’ love—the lovely Red Molly—knows he’s a bad boy and doesn’t try to change him. She accepts him and his fate, come what may. Plus she gets a really cool bike out of it, something that the corpse girl in “Teen Angel” was never able to promise her fella!

And then of course there is that mesmerizing acoustic guitar work that Richard tears through, so intricate and precise. It’s as good as an acoustic guitar can sound; so much harder than most ballads, yet still soft enough to create a lovely and singable tune.

So thank you, Mr. Thompson, for bringing a forgettable motif back for one final go-round, only finally doing it right.  No sap, no pap, no tears and very, very little human idiocy. Plenty of bad behavior, sure, but at least it’s acknowledged.

Let’s just hope Red Molly wasn’t killed by a runaway train on her way home. Or died in a hastily arranged motocross race.

My 25 Favorite Songs Part IV

10) “Woman”—John Lennon, 1980. This is a “time-and-place” song for me, having first heard it within days of Lennon’s being killed. I was an emerging Beatles nut at the time and had no idea what his death would mean for every person who would ever come to worship at the Beatles altar. This love letter to Yoko Ono is musical romance at its straightforward best. And thank God he got to say it before it was too late. “Let me tell you again and again and again…I love you, now and forever.”

9) “Achin’ To Be”—The Replacements, 1988. I’ve gone into depth about my love for the Replacements. This is not their best song, but it’s my favorite. Paul Westerberg was his generation’s finest songwriter, and his hoodlum poetics never sounded so sad, elegant, and lonely as this waking look at weary self-discovery (it even includes a wry gender-flop to give it an air of further detachment.) He’s written dozens of take-your-breath-away lyrics before and since, but this is Westerberg at his mature best. “She’s kinda like a poet who finds it hard to speak; the poems come so slowly, like the colors down a sheet.”

8) “Why Worry”— Dire Straits, 1985. A hushed, lullaby-like ballad spotlighting the water magic of Mark Knopfler’s Stratocaster. Pretty and seductive – I used to drift off to sleep at the end of some late, late college nights with this playing.“Just when this world seems mean and cold, our love comes shining red and gold, and all the rest is by the way.”

7) “Fall on Me” —R.E.M., 1986. Just a beautiful rock song, with wondrous descending harmony and melody lines that seem to go on forever and an undeniable pop hook. R.E.M. was music for people who felt different and needed something different; a club for people who didn’t belong to clubs. And this may very well be their best song, as well as my favorite. “Buy the sky and sell the sky, and bleed the sky and tell the sky, ‘Don’t fall on me.’”

6) “Rain”—Beatles, 1966. Probably written as a throwaway, but this is the height of Lennon’s fuzzy psychedalia and musical mathematics. It led to dozens of barely listenable hippy-dippy copycats, but this one is the genuine article. The first time I heard it was as a kid, finding it buried on Side 2 of the Hey Jude collection, just when I thought they couldn't get any better. The harmonies are magical, and Ringo’s at his very best, too. "Shine, the weather’s fine.”

My 25 Favorite Songs Part III

Interestingly, Part III (songs 15 down through 11) covers a 30 year swath of time, from 1969 to 1999. I had no idea my tastes were so expansive! (And yes. By "tastes" I mean "waistline.")

Up next, we enter my Top 10. But for now, here's the five songs that make up the middle portion of my personal Top 25.

15) “Desperados Under The Eaves”—Warren Zevon, 1976. Another songwriting giant, and I covered this song pretty extensively a few weeks ago. But Zevon had the uncannily ability to make Los Angeles seem deadly, gorgeous, terrifying, doomed, hilarious, and seductive at the same time. The three times I saw him live there were a few hundred people, tops, in the audience. Which was good. Because it’s nice being able to think you are in on a great, wonderful secret most don’t know anything about. “If California slides into the ocean like the mystics and statistics say it will, I predict this motel will be standing until I pay my bill.”

14) “Land of Hope and Dreams”—Bruce Springsteen, 1999. An invitation of a journey to a promising future, open to everyone—everyone—who wishes to come. The “need not apply” provision doesn’t exist – this train belong to all of us. Sprawling, soulful, timeless. Right on. “Hear the steel wheels singing…bells of freedom ringing.”

13) “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”—Bob Dylan, 1975. This should be a terribly sad song. But a master lyricist, storyteller and, most important, songwriter as skilled as Bob Dylan knew how to tell the real story and while relaying the pain and loss of a breakup, also remembering the good times and the humanity. That’s what I love so much about it - it’s a goodbye, but it’s a beautiful and affectionate one. “I’ll see you in the sky above, in the tall grass, in the ones I love.”






12) “There Is A Reason”—Alison Krause and Union Station, 1996. Alison’s singing is some kind of gift from some far away place – there simply is no voice to match her mix of sweetness and clarity. This is a faith-based song that explains in very simple terms what we’re all really hoping for. As someone who came to the party a bit later in life than most, I can dig it. I really can. “Heaven is the place I call my home, but I keep on getting caught up in this world I’m living in.”

11) “Here Comes the Sun”—Beatles, 1969. Not even Sandy Farina’s saccharine version in the God awful Sgt. Pepper movie (yes, that actually happened, it wasn’t just a bad dream) could make this song sound TOO bad. I have this picture in my mind of George Harrison, taken (just like John) far too soon, arriving at the pearly gates, and having every occupant of Heaven waiting for him, singing this song to him. Well done, sir. “Little darling, I feel that ice is slowly melting.”

The Wagon

There’s a great rock-n-roll debate built around the question, “What was the greatest year ever for rock-n-roll?” As in which year produced the best music?

And hell, we can start as far back as, say, 1956, when two gentlemen named Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra very much ruled the roost, and others like Fats Domino and Little Richard and Chuck Berry were just getting started.

That was definitely the best year for rock until…the next one. When 1957 gave us “Jailhouse Rock” and “That’ll Be the Day” and “Rock-n-Roll Music” and “Great Balls of Fire.” With the Everly Brothers and Sam Cooke starting things off for themselves as well. Wow.

1966 was an epic year, and I say that without a trace of hyperbole. With full-run albums now the primary vehicle to get the music out, as opposed to singles, this year gave us Pet Sounds, Revolver and Blonde on Blonde—epic indeed. 1968? Not too shabby with The Beatles and Beggar's Banquet and Electric Ladyland and Sweetheart of the Rodeo and Astral Weeks and Lady Soul.

Three years later 1971 gave us What’s Going On, Blue, Sticky Fingers and Who’s Next, while 1972 gave us Exile on Main Street, Talking Book, Led Zeppelin IV and Harvest.

Three more years later, 1975 gave us Born To Run, Horses, Physical Graffiti, Wish You Were Here and Blood on the Tracks. The list goes on—as the man said, as long as you've got a dime, the music will never stop.

But here’s a year closer to the present…well, a little bit, anyway. 1991.

Achtung Baby
Nevermind
Ten
Girlfriend
Metallica

Five albums that represented the very, very best of each of those artists, at least four of which are first-ballot Rock-n-Roll Hall of Famers, and the fifth (Matthew Sweet) one of rock's most respected and enduring figures.

On the "second tier" were albums like Out of Time, The Soul Cages, Gish, Luck of the Draw, Woodface, Apocalpyse 91, Badmtorfinger and Dangerous, which should take a backseat to very few.

What's more, Stevie Wonder did his best work in a decade with the Jungle Fever soundtrack. Toad the Wet Sprocket and Cypress Hill and 2Pac debuted. Prince and the Pixies and Elvis Costello and N.W.A. had estimable releases. Guns 'n Roses had two albums that apparently a lot of people liked. Even without anything from our boy Bruce Springsteen, that makes for one hell of a watershed year.

And tucked among all that came one of the finest releases from one of the finest bands of the era. Green Mind by Dinosaur Jr.

J. Mascis and company (OK, mostly J. at this point) never sounded better than  on an album that was loud, fast, tight and just bled nihilistic pathos. As much as any album ever released, Green Mind was a perfect hybrid of the post-punk movement that came before it (The Replacements, Husker Du, The Pixies) and the so-called “grunge” era that made its big splash in 1991 and controlled the early 1990s.

Leading off Green Mind is, in my estimation, the band’s greatest song, “The Wagon.” Just shy of 5 minutes of revved up, rocket-fueled energy, it is all at once chaotic and melodic, reaching full speed literally half a second in and with J.’s vocals surprisingly coherent and a tunefulness to the song that truly surprises you. Not only does the breakneck tempo never let up, but it even speeds up as it careens towards the halfway point. Just before J. unleashes (starting at 2:19 in the below clip) one of the truly great and astonishing guitar solos in rock-n-roll history.

1991 gave us tons to be thankful for, musically. Green Mind and “The Wagon” are right there at the front of the line.

My 25 Favorite Songs, Part II

20) “Bad”— U2, 1985. A terrifyingly gripping song, mixing tragedy and hope in one six-minute swell. I never wanted to like U2 in the mid-80s when they started to get huge—just because, I guess. But watching Bono do this at LiveAid led to a grudging “Mm hmm” from me. And then watching it a few years later during Rattle and Hum put me over the edge. No pun intended (heh...The Edge. Heh.) Anyway, it's symphonic in the way it builds to a climax and then lets up very slowly, very deliberately. Sad and astonishing. “True colors fly in blue and black, blue silken sky and burning flak.”



19) “Red Shoes”—Elvis Costello, 1977. Geek bravado at its apex. As a geek who likes to think he’s brave (I’m not), it kinda speaks to me. Usually saying, “Get out of my face.” But still I love the way it smiles and hisses at the same time. “I used to be disgusted, now I try to be amused.”



18) “America”—Simon and Garfunkel, 1968. In college I took off one night on a plane ride halfway across America and spent a couple of days on the road, from Texas out to New Mexico, searching for…something. I never found it, and neither does the narrator of this song. But the search for something real and personal continues, Paul Simon put together a travelogue of the soul here. “'Kathy, I’m lost,’ I said, though I knew she was sleeping.”



17) “Me and Bobbi McGee”— Kris Kristofferson, 1971. This probably should be higher, but being on this list should be good enough for now. It’s Jack Kerouac condensed to four lovable minutes. And it’s a genuine piece of my childhood—on every car trip we’d take as a family, my parents had this playing on the tapedeck. It’s now embedded, as it should be. Love, adventure, and loss without regrets, a landmark tale of affection that takes us straight across the U.S.A. “I’d trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday, holding Bobbi’s body next to mine.”



16) “The Pretender”—Jackson Browne, 1976. The man knew pain. And he knew how to write about it. Self-deprecating and self-realizing without an ounce of self-pity. My favorite Jackson Browne song. “We’ll get up and do it again. Amen.”

My 25 Favorite Songs, Part I

What's your favorite song? Your favorite 5 songs? 10 songs? Impossible to answer, right? Whittling down a lifetime of music listening and appreciation into one tiny little box?

Well, no, not quite impossible. But yes, very difficult. And the only way to do it, as they say, is to do it. That’s what I did.

I thought of those songs that please me the most. Those songs that I’ll stay in the car to listen to until they finish, even though I’m already sitting in the driveway. Those songs that have etched a place in my heart, mind and soul. Those songs that, in their own small ways, play a part in who I am now.

Without further ado, here begins my Top 25 Favorite Songs Ever.

25) “Can’t Help Falling In Love”—Elvis Presley, 1962. My favorite Elvis song, which has to count for something. Plus, it says it all so easily and so sincerely. “Some things are meant to be.”

24) “So. Central Rain”—R.E.M., 1984. This wasn’t their first great song—“Radio Free Europe” was—but it was their finest early attempt to get directly personal. And maybe more important to me, it was the first R.E.M. song I ever heard,  being allowed a quick listen on a friend’s Walkman backstage during a high school musical in 1984. Peter Buck’s guitar lines ring with haunting clarity, and Michael Stipe was only beginning to show was he was capable of doing with his voice. “Go build yourself another home, this choice isn’t mine.”

23) “Mercy Street”—Peter Gabriel, 1986. A stunning, muted tribute to troubled poet Anne Sexton, with images so real you can see Gabriel staring out over the empty streets as he writes. I have always been amazed by how sweetly he sings these lines, at the richness and soulfulness in his voice. “Dreaming of the tenderness, the tremble in the hips, of kissing Mary’s lips.”



22) “Visions of Johanna”—Bob Dylan, 1966. This is high poetry, with which Dylan sets the bar at an impossibly lofty level for himself. I am emotionally invested by the second verse, and I never want it to end as the song keeps building and the images of Johanna’s face and Madonna and nightwatchmen with flashlights and Mona Lisa with the “highway blues” keep flooding in. If William Blake did his stuff to music, it may have sounded like this. “The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face.”



21) “Fat Man in The Bathtub”—Little Feat, 1973. Around every corner of this song I hear something a little different from what I’d previously expected of rock-n-roll. Before being introduced to them in college by pal Tim, I thought they were a Grateful Dead-like jam band.  Which as Scott once said (about something else, not this) is a little like saying the Beatles were a great cover band; accurate but only a tiny fraction of the whole truth. The meshing of so many musical flavors into one glorious tune sucked me in right away. As did the best of Lowell George’s surreal, depraved imagination. “All I want in this life of mine is some good clean fun. All I want in this life and time is some hit and run.”