Make Me A Mixtape! A Valentine’s Day Playlist
We’re usually a cynical bunch when it comes to Valentine’s Day, but no more: this year, we’re turning over a new leaf. Instead of putting together the songs most likely to leave you sobbing into your drink of choice, we took a deep, shaky breath and found some of the most touching love songs we could think of. Bear with us: this is new territory.
Submotion Orchestra
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The Song: "All Yours" This lush, mellifluous little trip-hop jam was one of the most unabashedly romantic things we heard all last year. Trip-hop often makes us think of clichd things -- bubble baths, candles, etc. -- which is probably why it gets so abused in hotel lobbys. But the good stuff, like this song, just bypasses all that stuff and lets you settle into it.
Sebastien Tellier
Fleet Foxes
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The Song: "Lorelai" Sometimes, you just need to sing of your love in the style of bards since time immemorial: with an acoustic guitar, that is, and some classic round-robin vocal harmonizing. The Fleet Foxes might be a chaste-seeming bunch, but their ardour is real: this song is the modern-day equivalent of standing underneath a balcony strumming a lute.
Ghostpoet
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The Song: "Us Against Whatever Ever" Ghostpoet is a loopy sort, and this might not be the most traditional Valentine in the world. But sometimes quirky is the way to go, and this sweet, off-kilter little confection proves there is love in his heart.
The Cure
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The Song: "Love Cats" Robert Smith was a bit of a manic-depressive; when he wasn't wallowing in the murkiest depths of existential despair, he was riding high on a fragile bubble of ecstatic happiness. Catch him here, at his best, as he yips "we're so wonderfully wonderfully wonderfully wonderfully pretty" over finger-snapping ersatz swing music.
Ben Ottewell
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The Song: "Blackbird" This one is tailor-made for sitting, Indian-style, shoes off with a guitar, in the grass and singing preferably in a public place, in hopes that somebody interesting, and interested, will wander up.
The Isley Bros
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The Song: "How Deep is the Ocean" A piece of starry-eyed doo-wop as charming, refreshing, and undeniable as a malted shake in a frosty mug -- topped with two straws, of course.
Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan
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The Song: "Come Undone" When you put Mark Lanegan's redwood rumble and Isobel's breathy coo together, something steamy is bound to happen. And it does! This song is pitched at pretty much the precise tempo of slow undressing.
Temper Trap
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The Song: "Love Lost" Shades of Bono circa U2's "The Sweetest Thing," this breathy, feather-light little jam starts spare but builds into one of those heart-swelling, slow-build instrumental crescendos indie-rock pretty much owns a patent on.
Big Star
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The Song: "Thirteen" Quite simply, this is one of the sweetest, most pure-hearted love songs ever written. The way the tempo picks up just that little bit towards the end, mimicking exactly the way a heartbeat quickens at a pivotal romantic moment? Perfection.
Los Campesinos!
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The Song: "You! Me! Dancing!" There is still no better way to win a wallflower's love than with this caffeinated little burst of spontaneous joy. If your betrothed is a Library Studies major, this is your "Let's Get It On."
Pains of Being Pure At Heart
Peter, Bjorn and John
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The Song: "Young Folks" If the breezy whistling on this song doesn't conjure the carefree feeling of discovering you've just fallen in love for you, than we don't know what will.
The Postal Service
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The Song: "Such Great Heights" Ben Gibbard whisks you away to a mountaintop, where you and he laugh at all those poor, lovelorn souls below. A giddy song, one that toes the cute/cloying line with a bashful toe.
Prince Douglas
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The Song: "Let Me Love You (Dub)" A deep dub song can feel either like a warm, luxurious bath complete with oils and bubbles or like being abandoned in a cave miles away from human civilization while you shiver slowly to death. All depends on the vibe, really. Luckily, this one falls on the "bubble bath" side of the spectrum: unhurried, calm, besotted, and beautiful.
Four Tet
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The Song: "Angel Echoes" Wordless. Looping. Ecstatic. Four Tet's little digital cloud of good feelings "Angel Echoes" feels like a love letter penned by your brain stem. Sometimes love isn't eloquent: the only words that make their way through the song are variations on "love" and "you." Not much else needs be said.
Teddy Pendergrass
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The Song: "Turn off The Lights" And then there's the direct approach! Teddy Pendergrass never was one to mince words: He had one message. It usually involved oil-rubbing and candles, lights being turned off, and/or panties, usually with the latter being removed and, possibly, thrown. He had all the subtlety of a Marine drill sergeant. But hey, sometimes that approach works too.
Amadou & Miriam
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The Song: Je Pense et Toi Valentine's Day might normally be all about candlelit dinners and soft music, but there should still be room for a little light funk! Try this one, a slickly bumping little retooling of an Amadou & Miriam classic.
Sharon Jones
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The Song: "Natural Born Lover" Sharon Jones seems like the kind of woman who would willingly enter into a group knife fight for the one she loves. She's a tough one, from the voice on down: a combination of Aretha brass, Diana Ross shimmy, and Otis Redding's gut-wrenching, sandpapery grit. If you've ever seen her pluck a bashful man from the crowd at one of her shows and gyrate furiously all over him, you also know she's not afraid of being direct. A big, loud smooch from this woman is just the thing.
Bjork
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The Song: "Come To Me" Instead of wasting your time and ours with more breathless writing about How Good Bjork Is, we decided to just link to something beautiful and let you watch it: here is Bjork, performing this lovely, meditative koan of a love song in 1993.
