What's to Love - A Selection of Love Songs

by editor Michele Catalano

Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs. Paul McCartney may have penned the ultimate song about love songs, but it’s not a love song in itself.  

There are no rules when it comes to love songs. What makes a good love song? is as impossible for me to answer as What is love? I just know it when I hear it.   

I have three different love songs playlists, because I’m entitled to my moods: One that I made when I was actually in love, one that’s hard rock/metal love songs, and one that’s simply called “Love is Dead” (yes, even anti-love songs can be love songs). 

Here are some of my favorite love songs. Some of them are actual love songs, some aren’t. Who am I to say?

The National – “Apartment Story”

Is it a love song or an ode to Seasonal Affective Disorder? No matter. It’s a love song to me. One that makes the otherwise dark, confining claustrophobia of winter seem like something to savor in lieu of taking part in life outside your door. Hiding out, maybe getting drunk and listening to records while you wait for some kind of unpleasantness to intrude on you; barring the door against not only the winter but the pretense of life, of going through the motions, of facing the world as put-together human beings rather than the fractured people we are*. Sleep in our clothes and wait for winter to leave* has always struck me as romanticized agoraphobia, making “Apartment Story” a perfect love song for the frightened, the fractured, the weary, and those we bring down with us into the abyss of our winters. 

Queens of the Stone Age – “Make It Wit Chu”

When I last was one half of a couple, this was our song. It’s not a conventional love song by any means, but there’s nothing conventional about QOTSA. The song is sultry and beckoning and feels dangerous in a way that makes you want to run toward it instead of running away, even though you know this absolutely means trouble for you in the immediate future. There’s a heady love/lust combination here that hits that sweet spot right before “this song is too horny.”

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit – “If We Were Vampires”

A good love song can make you cry; a great one makes you weep. The first time I heard this one, I cried so hard in my car that I had to pull over to catch my breath. I was deeply in love with my husband at the time, and the idea that one of us would be gone before the other pulled at my heart in such a way that it fell apart right there in a dark Starbucks parking lot. With this song, you are witness to a love so profound that you absorb it into your own heart and break down accordingly.

The Mountain Goats – “Old College Try”

Holding hands until the bitter, inevitable end. That feeling when there’s still a shred of love for each other, but you know it has to end. When the cons outnumber the pros, but you’re willing to ride it out until all the pros get crossed off the list. A love that endures, even when the relationship doesn’t. It’s dark and desperate and it fills your heart.

Bright Eyes – “First Day of My Life”

This song captures that feeling of falling so hard for someone that you feel high all the time, whether you are with them or not. Just a constant feeling of walking on air. There’s trepidation but also an optimistic resignation, the feeling that this is it, this is the one, I don’t have to look anymore, let’s do this. It’s a sweet song for the most part, even if the lines But I’d rather be working for a paycheck / Than waiting to win the lottery speak to a settling of sorts. And that’s okay. It has to be.

Pixies – Cactus/White Stripes – Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground

Two songs born of the same idea: I miss you so much that it fucking hurts. They are, ostensibly, about someone on tour who misses their partner. One is still away; one is coming home.

Sitting here wishing on a cement floor

Just wishing that I had just something you wore

Bloody your hands on a cactus tree

Wipe it on your dress and send it to me

This desperate, needy love is recognizable to so many of us. That feeling that you can’t breathe without them, or at least without part of them. It’s the ultimate declaration of a deep, unabiding love.

Similarly, “Dead Leaves” provides us with a longing, a desperate need.

Soft hair and a velvet tongue

I want to give you what you give to me

And every breath that is in your lungs

Is a tiny little gift to me

I believe these songs take place in the same universe. It’s a universe most people know well.

Dramarama – Anything, Anything

This ‘80s banger is a marriage proposal, albeit a rather unconventional one.

I’ll give you candy, give you diamonds

Give you pills, give you anything you want

Hundred dollar bills

I’ll even let you watch the shows you want to see

Just marry me, marry me, marry me

Sounds like a deal, man. Let’s do it. 

Talking Heads – This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)

There is no greater love song lyric than And you love me till my heart stops / Love me till I’m dead.

What’s your favorite unusual sort of love song? Email me your pick with a short blurb and I will print the answers in a future column, then make a playlist. michele.catalano@gmail.com 

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