Another Valentine’s Day is upon us, and our hearts go out to the lovelorn and wishing among us. Even those who are deep in love can know the sad-eyed dewiness of a breakup or unrequited romance, whether from a high-school crush or a lifelong desire. Our editors pulled together some of their personal favorite swoon-worthy songs and albums to give the day that extra bit of bittersweet hum.
“Words” by F.R. David
F.R. David‘s 1982 smash “Words” is a Europop masterpiece whose sweet, yearning tone is as vulnerable as its sentiment. Who hasn’t been so tongue-tied by love that words simply won’t come? Over an insistent synthpop pulse, David lays his heart bare, “words don’t come easy to me, how can I find a way to say I love you, words don’t come easy.” It wasn’t a hit in the U.S., but it topped numerous charts throughout Europe and remains the French singer/songwriter’s most enduring song, an infinitely relatable anthem for unrequited love. – Timothy Monger
Sea Change by Beck
An easy choice, for sure, but for folks of a certain age who got their hearts smashed to pieces around the same time as Beck, this album sure was handy for wallowing in that heartache and feeling like someone out there really felt what you were feeling. I mean, if the hitherto happy-go-lucky alterna-jester (who released the cheeseball sex-romp Midnite Vultures just a few years prior) could have his heart broken, then maybe the pain we felt was also legit. The songs still hit to this day, their melancholy and depressed lyrics pairing perfectly with some of the saddest music Beck ever put to tape. It’s beautiful to just be lost in the cloud of feels, whether the wounds are fresh or decades old. – Neil Z. Yeung
“A Wish” by Fred Hersch and Norma Winstone
Though somewhat obscure, singer Norma Winstone and pianist Fred Hersch‘s “A Wish” is one of the most indelible evocations of romantic longing. Recorded for 2003’s Songs & Lullabies, the ballad is sung from the point of view of someone who never told the person they loved how they felt. Now, years later on Valentine’s Day, they are ruminating on what might have been. Winstone sings, “No hearts, no flowers at my door/No cards from someone I adore/And yet it seems you are the focus of my dreams.” There’s an implied drama to the lyrics, one that feels as if it could have been culled from a Stephen Sondheim musical. Yet, whether they were close friends, work colleagues, or even strangers who just passed one another on the street is never made clear. I often imagine them as neighbors in an apartment complex meeting in an elevator, as Winstone reveals, “There in the middle of my day/You smiled and took my breath away.” With her voice a delicate ripple on the glassy lake of Hersch’s chord, Winstone brings out the song’s hushed, late-afternoon quality, as if she is truly singing to herself. Part of the bittersweet power of “A Wish” comes from it being a Valentine’s Day-themed song, but where the romance never even had a chance to live. – Matt Collar
Please by Sondre Lerche
No offense to so many other emotionally revealing, relatable breakup albums from across the eras, but Sondre Lerche‘s Please holds a special place in this lacerated heart. Far from a maudlin or even sad release, Please locks into a rattled, post-abandonment stage of grief that’s stuck between anger, deep depression, acceptance, and dead inside. Full of sarcasm, poorly veiled resentment, bittersweetness, and a recurring crime theme, it sets an impulse to figuratively and literally burn bridges against an irrepressible samba-like rhythm (“Lucifer”), mourns what could have been but will never be with an anthemic pop accompanied by a choreographed dance video (“Legends”), brings it down to conversational levels for a tangled tercet like “I won’t lie/Baby, you broke me/I am truly a lucky guy” (the suave but skittery and at times ominously warped “Lucky Guy”), and claims not to be sentimental while delivering pithy ruminations like “I’ll be damned if I fight/I’ll be damned if I don’t” and “Love be the hurt and the consoler” (the noise-ballad masterpiece “Sentimentalist”). Even the album’s title is fraught with emotional multitudes. – Marcy Donelson
Songs for Lovers by Chet Baker
Songs for Lovers is a collection of wistful and romantic crooning tunes from Chet Baker that acts as a terrific introduction to his low-fi breathy singing delivery, punctuated by soft and taseful trumpet solos. Sticking to traditional compositions and small combos, Baker embraces the aching and longing of even the most upbeat and positive love songs, adding a whiff of gray cloud to every silver lining. The highlights on the record are the songs where Baker combines his soft vocal with his bright horn, including the loping “That Old Feeling” and the bedroom diary entry “My Ideal.” Overall, the album is springlike and warm, with bittersweet melodies that work perfectly fine as background music but reward the listener who closes their eyes and leans in. – Zac Johnson
Love is a Stream by Jefre-Cantu Ledesma
Even with the endless songs, poems, films, and other creative reaches grasping since the beginning of time to express it, the feeling of love is still beyond words. Without many words at all, Jefre-Cantu Ledesma‘s 2010 album Love is a Stream comes close to articulating at least a certain kind of love. Ledesma had moved from post-rock bands and ambient applications of guitar into even more formless territory on his solo compositions, and here his shoegaze-descendant rivers of fuzz and marshmallow soft feedback tones are so intense they’re gentle again. It’s an album of pure, beautiful noise, melting the midwinter ice and rewiring brain chemistry. Let this album wash over you at the right moment, and it might evoke a flood of out-of-focus scenes, floating in the air like romcoms from another dimension or lovestruck daydreams. – Fred Thomas
