Great Love Songs to Get Your Valentine's Day Heating Up
Nick Murray
Seeing as the news has been nothing but tax rates and divisive trials lately, and it is Valentine's Day, after all. How about something a little more positive.
Here, for all you lovers out there are some really great love ditties you gotta get into your system.
Been kind. Enjoy some clever tunes and have a lovely Valentine's Day.
Ben Folds - The Luckiest
Ben Folds knows how to express his emotions. This song, which is merely just Ben Folds and a piano, is about an elderly man looking back on a long life of loving the woman he loves. He ponders what life might have been like had they been born fifty years apart and he seems convinced of his ability to defy time. The eyes being the window to the soul. He would know her and her love regardless of the circumstances in which they passed.
"In a white sea of eyes / I see on pair I recognize / And I know / I am the luckiest."
My wife and I have completely opposing tastes in music. This is one of the very few songs I have introduced her to that she actually likes. And she likes it a lot.
Sufjan Stevens - To Be Alone With You
I'm not even sure if this is meant to be a love song, but the sentiment of it sure hits home like one. The first verse is basically Sufjan Stevens, strumming a guitar while singing out all the things he would do just to spend some time alone with someone important to him.
I'm pretty sure the second verse is a vague reference to Jesus being crucified. It's maybe not the most romantic image and the more I think about it the more I realize he might actually be speaking about his love for the lord in this song, I suppose that's romantic for some; but you can interpret it whichever way you like. And I interpret it as a quaint little love passage that gets you thinking about your significant other...or someone you want to be your signiticant other.
Iron & Wine - Call it Dreaming
My wife and I chose this song as our first dance song at our wedding; and I'm still convinced its the ultimate first dance song. It's heartfelt enough to be impactful and it's got just enough swagger in it for you to dance in the kitchen to it. Which we did, probably like fifty times.
"Where the sun isn't only sinking fast
Every night knows how long it's supposed to last
Where the time of our lives is all we have
And we get a chance to say
Before we ease away
For all the love you've left behind
You can have mine"
The Decemberists - Red Right Ankle
This song might not even be a love song either. But it sure feels like one. It puts me in the couch every time I play it. Not on the couch; in it. Like literally sinking into the couch. The Decemberists singer-songwriter, Colin Meloy, is a weirdly poetical man, born of the wrong century. He's very good at comprising vague couplets that invoke the sweetest of memories.
"And how it whispered
Oh adhere to me
For we are bound by symmetry
And whatever differences our lives have been
We together make a limb"
The Maccabees - Toothpaste Kisses
This relatively unheard of alternative-pop rock track about two jilted lovers meeting each other is about as charming as a song can get.
It's more a song about new, possibly fleeting, love, than anything else. Two lovers meet each other and act out the motions of real love. Lets be real. Valentine's Day is great for singles too. It's a great icebreaker that can be used to meet someone new. Someone with which you can also indulge in those toothpaste kisses
Damien Rice - The Blower's Daughter
I first heard the Blower's Daughter in the movie Closer, starring Natalie Portman and Jude Law. It wasn't a very good movie. In fact, this song is the only thing I remember about it.
It turns out that the song has a pretty amazing and creepy backstory to it. Damien worked at a call center in Ireland, and he sparked up a friendship with a lady he had called one day. From work, he began calling her more frequently and their discussions became ever more intimate before she finally stopped answering.
He was distraught, so he did some investigating and found out where she lived. He wanted to profess his love to her, so he went to her place. It was there that he realized she wasn't a lady at all, but merely a sixteen year old girl who had been using his calls for cheap entertainment.
It's a little unsettling and I don't recommend hunting down random women's addresses, but it sure made for a great love song.
The Weakerthans - The Reason
The greatness of this song revolves around one cute little couplet. That's it. It's a rock song about a guy who is kind of a dopey loser and he's got a lover who seemingly has nothing at all in common with him. He doesn't care though. He couldn't be happier. The entire song culminates around the chorus, where he sings "I know, you might roll your eyes at this/ But I'm so glad that you exist."
Iron & Wine - Such Great Heights
This song was originally written by The Postal Service, a sort of pre-emo indie dance group. The lyrics in it are spectacular, so I want to give Ben Gibbard (who went on to form Death Cab for Cutie), the singer, all of that credit. But I just find that the song is so much more powerful when it's been stripped down to nothing but Sam Beam and an acoustic guitar.
I don't know if a more emotive love lyric has ever been written than "I am thinking it's a sign/ That the freckles in our eyes/ Are mirror images and when we kiss They're perfectly aligned/ And I have to speculate/ That God himself did make us Into corresponding shapes Like puzzle pieces from the clay"
Have a great Valentine's Day.