With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, you’re bound to stumble across stacks of top ten lists containing writers’ favorite romantic comedies, love songs, etc. But for those of you fed up with the Sinatra/Streissand stroke fest when it comes to the greatest love songs of all time (no offense to the Chairman of the Board), we’ve spiced up some old favorites by mixing them with a little shoegaze, hip hop, and other overlooked genres when it comes to romance. So poison the tips of your heart-shaped arrows, crack open that congealing chocolate, and enjoy CoS’s top ten love songs.

10. “Take It With Me” - Tom Waits (1999)

Being in love isn’t always sad.  It isn’t always happy either. Tom Waits finds the bittersweet middle morsel with this stripped down cut from 1999’s classic Mule Variations. Featuring nothing but Waits’ unmistakably shredded throat and a piano so gentle you can hear the pedals creaking, the song is beautiful in its simplicity. Waits drops his carnival bark for a nod to his loungier days, gently croaking and crooning through Coney Island memories about his wife that he wants to take with him when he passes away. Waits has tackled death from every angle (check out Bone Machine for his creepier side) but here he’s at his most tender, using sincere sentimentality to elevate his music to a retrospective on romanticism that your grandmother could love. Just don’t let her listen to “Filipino Box Spring Hog”, which comes only one track earlier.

9. “Something I Can’t Have” - The Jesus & Mary Chain (1995)

As much as they try to fight it with buzzing iron gates of distortion and feedback, The Jesus & Mary Chain write damn good pop songs. What’s more is that they write damn good love songs. 1995’s B-side collection Hate Rock ‘N’ Roll contains a ton of them, and while “Bleeder” and “Taking It Away” are pop rock love gems in their own right, “Something I Can’t Have” remains the band’s best song about pining for someone.  Although it still contains their signature twisted lyrics (“I got it good, I got it strong, I got it down where it belongs” is a favorite), our beloved Scots can’t disguise the boyish giddiness of their brisk pacing and yippy delivery. “We can kiss in tongues” may be as lyrically sweet as they’ll get, but that doesn’t make it any less romantic.

8. “Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect” - The Decemberists (2002)

Indie music is full of storytellers. But what sets Decemberists frontman and chief songwriter apart from Will Sheff, Craig Finn, Dan Bejar, or any other musical yarn spinner of today is his traditional approach. Sheff has more teeth, Finn’s got more details, and Bejar’s made lyrical weirdness an art form, but Meloy takes the cake when it comes to rich, somewhat archaic tales that favor beginnings, middles, and ends over experimentation. “Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect” (from the band’s 2002 debut Castaways And Cutouts) does this three times in four and a half minutes as Meloy imagines himself carrying on a romance with the same woman in a kaleidoscope of theatrical scenarios. Whether he’s a Birkenau soldier seduced by a girl at a traveling carnival, a contracted architect who’s collapsed design allows him to steal the woman he was paid to protect, or a dying Spanish puppeteer reminiscing about his teenage girlfriend, it all sounds lush, dusky, and a little like Autumn, thanks to Jenny Conlee’s breezy organ and Chris Funk’s nostalgic fingerplucking. For anyone who thinks romance is boring, this is the song for you.

7. “Harvest Moon” - Neil Young (1992)

The story behind the title track from Neil Young’s 1992 sequel to Harvest is almost as sweet as the song itself. Reportedly written for his wife Pegi when they were on the brink of separation, the straightforward falsetto lyrics and soothing prairie strumming sound like enough to keep any couple together. You can’t help but admire Young’s wizened candor on proclamations like “I’m still in love with you on this harvest moon”, allowing himself to settle into his age to make some of the best, more mature music of his career. And nothing beats the broom sweep percussion when seeing the song live. If you’re going through a rough patch with your significant other, give this one a spin. Just lie and say you wrote it.

6. “Black” - Okkervil River (2005)

Love is a complicated thing, especially when you find out your new girlfriend has been horribly molested.  Sounds like Okkervil River territory! Darkly contrasted by bubbly synthesizers and bouncing ’70s AM rhythm, the protagonist from Okkervil’s River 2005 masterpiece concept album Black Sheep Boy wants to give his beau the best gift of all; blood-soaked, murderous revenge against her former sexual predator. And with gutsy, grimy promises like “if I could tear his throat, and spill his blood between my jaws, and erase his name for good, don’t you know that I would”, you want him to succeed. But what’s beautiful is how, in the end, he doesn’t commit vindictive first degree, instead respecting his gal’s wishes of simply wanting to leave that part of her life behind. “When I look at you, I’m proud,” he gushes.  The narrator’s girlfriend wants no more violence, and for that she should be commended. And so should Sheff for writing a love song as dark as the color of its namesake.

5. “Spottieottiedopalicious” - Outkast (1999)

Drenched in well-bottom bass, pulsating congas, Darian Emory’s cascade of horns, and the hushed spoken word poetry of Andre 3000 and Big Boi, this song sweats…no, oozes with love, lust, and responsibility in the deep South. At seven minutes plus, the centerpiece jewel of Aquemini’s 1999 hip hop crown sees a couple thirst for each other in the veins of a violent club scene, get knocked up, and take those first hesitant steps toward marriage. From a streetwise first person point of view, Big Boi muses on both the beauty and terror of the situation, his lyrics broadcasting an ultra-cool afterschool special that never takes the sultry sizzle out of the song.

4. “The Fever” - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band (1973)

The Boss has more famous love songs (“Thunder Road”, “Born To Run”, “I’m On Fire”…you could go all night) but you’ll never hear his best one played at the Superbowl, or even on any of his studio albums.  Solely released on the 1998 odds and ends collection 18 Tracks, what began as a 1973 demo and became an accidental 1974 hit showcases Springsteen at his most jazzy, swooning and snapping fingers over his latest female infatuation with atypical restraint (especially for his ’70s work) as the late, great organist Danny Federici, manic drummer Vinnie “Mad Dog Lopez,” and of course, the Big Man himself, saxophonist Clarence Clemmons all weave a speakeasy riff with their respective instruments. Even better, you get to hear them all chant the backing vocals with surprising clarity, Clemmons’ liquid rolling baritone nearly sharing the lead on the smoky chorus. This timeless cut is a gem in that it captures the E Street Band at their most cohesive during a period when they were at their most frenetic. If you and your better half are lucky enough to find this one at your local jukebox, dim the bar lights to red, quietly light a cigarette (anti-smoking laws be damned), stir the ice in your glass and let The Boss do the rest.

3. “I’m The Man Who Loves You” - Wilco (2002)

Blasting from the static soundscape of 2002’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco’s most experimental album to date, this folksy rocker combines the best of both worlds; the vicious, avant garde assault of Jeff Tweedy’s arcade missile guitar (Galaga, anyone?) and the twangy, down home country thump of the band’s early work circa A.M. and Being There. Throw in the garbled, cartoon squawk of some ragtime horns and Tweedy’s crisp, internal rhyming (“all I can be is a busy sea of spinning wheels and hands that feel for stones to throw and feet that run but they come back home” - yowza!) and you’ve got the funnest sounding love letter known to man. Now try playing it.

2. “Everlong” - Foo Fighters (1997)

Everyone from David Letterman to Bronson Arroyo to Stephen King loves this song, and for once, everyone is right. For all of the goofball humor found in their sidesplitting videos, The Foo Fighters can’t hide the unbridled romantics crouching in their grungy souls on their best cut (and arguably best song, period) from 1997’s The Colour And The Shape. Written for frontman Dave Grohl’s then girlfriend, Veruca Salt’s Louise Post, as a testament to the exhilarating, whirlwind nature of their relationship, the song, boasts stellar arena rock musicianship and yearning, loud-soft dynamics that Frank Black would envy. But the real star is Grohl’s voice, which flexes every ounce of its range; from the hushed vigil of the verses to the anthemic growl of the chorus to the indiscernible, underwater whisper of the interlude, he lets you know that when it comes to love, the stakes are always high.

1. “God Only Knows” - The Beach Boys (1966)

Sometimes, you’ve gotta stick with the classics. As sick as some of you may be of seeing it, there’s a reason this song makes the majority of top ten lists, and if the list pertains to love, it’s a staple. While the valley of French horns, the playful clomp of horse hooves, the pixie flutes, the invasive drumming, the waterfalling vocals, and every other musical stroke of genius Brian Wilson managed to bleed into the song made it different from anything else released at the time, the most striking element is the opening line. How many love songs start off with “I may not always love you”? However, everything turns around with the next phrase. “But long as there are stars above you, you never need to doubt it, I’ll make you sure about it,” lets us know that in the world of Wilson’s masterpiece, he is talking about forever. This initial irony gives the entire thing an enormous melancholy weight that’s spruced back up to the heavens of teenage romance by the mini symphony he’s created, leaving us with a final message of unconditional, unrequited love.

It’s a universal piece of art that works as well in the final sequence of Love, Actually as it does in Boogie Nights. Co-writer Tony Asher summed it up best when referring to the initial gripes from the record executives concerning the lyrics’ seemingly pessimistic nature. “I knew that it would work, because by the second part, the real meaning of the song has come out: ‘I’ll love you till the sun burns out, then I’m gone,’ ergo ‘I’m gonna love you forever.’ ” Amen to that.

Categories: Features, List 'Em Carefully
Tags: Bruce Springsteen, Foo Fighters, Neil Young, Okkervil River, OutKast, The Beach Boys, The Decemberists, The E Street Band, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Tom Waits, Wilco