What Is This Thing Called Love?

Valentine’s Day is coming up, so naturally this week’s playlist will be devoted to this annual celebration of love and romance.

It seems to me that there are essentially three popular things to do on Valentine’s Day: 1) nothing, 2) do something extravagant though ultimately empty of real affection for the person you love, or 3) complain. Complaints are often related to the gift-giving process; men complain about having to give the perfect gift, or else face a year of grief for not being thoughtful, while women usually complain about men (a hot topic for discussion/whining in the time preceding this dreadful holiday). In this case, by the way, some women seem to think every day is Valentine’s Day.

I spent time this past week trying to decide if this week’s list should be in celebration of love, or in humiliation of it. I decided that there’s just too much potential for either idea to skip either, so I’m doing them both. In the case of the “pro-love” list, I ask you to remember that probably one in three songs ever written is about love, so I couldn’t possibly make a fully comprehensive collection into a list that could fit onto a single CD. These are some of my favorite love songs (or just generally romantic, if not actual love songs), spanning several genres.

Enjoy!

“Love Bites”:
1. Somebody Kill Me- Adam Sandler (from “The Wedding Singer”)
2. Love Bites- Def Leppard
3. Love You In Vain- Alison Krauss
4. I Will Survive- Gloria Gaynor
5. Don’t Get Around Much Anymore- Duke Ellington
6. Love Song For No One- John Mayer
7. Faded Love- Patsy Cline
8. Love Hurts- Nazareth
9. Where Did Our Love Go?- The Supremes
10. You Give Love a Bad Name- Bon Jovi
11. Love Her Madly- The Doors
12. Tainted Love- Soft Cell
13. Cold As Ice- Foreigner
14. Witchy Woman- The Eagles
15. More Than a Feeling- Boston
16. I Heard It Through The Grapevine- Gladys Knight
17. Chain of Fools- Aretha Franklin
18. Don’t Miss You At All- Norah Jones
19. Solitude- Billie Holiday
20. Can’t We Be Friends?- Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

Congrats to Duke Ellington for writing three (#’s 5, 18, and 19) of the the twenty songs!

“All You Need Is Love”:
1. All You Need Is Love- The Beatles
2. All The Things You Are- Ella Fitzgerald
3. (Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher- Jackie Wilson
4. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)- Marvin Gaye
5. People Will Say We’re in Love- from “Oklahoma!”
6. How Deep is Your Love- Bee Gees
7. Your Song- from “Moulin Rouge”
8. Cheek to Cheek- Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
9. Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You- Frankie Vallie & the Four Seasons
10. The Nearness of You- Pat Metheny and James Taylor (I have five versions of this song, including versions by Ella and Louis, Sarah Vaughan, and Norah Jones; but they’re used elsewhere this week, so this is the recording I chose)
11. They Can’t Take That Away From Me- Sarah Vaughan
12. Embraceable You- Charlie Parker
13. My Girl- The Temptations
14. You’ve Really Got A Hold On Me- Smokey Robinson
15. Knocks Me Off My Feet- Stevie Wonder
16. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic- The Police
17. Best of My Love- The Eagles
18. Tell Her About It- Billy Joel

Well? What do you think? Don’t you just want a copy of these CD’s sooooooo bad?