Love: part one of 1000 songs everyone must hear | Music | The Guardian
The Beach Boys
1966
Paul McCartney and Brian Wilson have both acknowledged the musical arms race that their bands were in from 1965-67, vying to stretch the boundaries of pop. At the time, Sgt Pepper seemed the peak, and a drained and damaged Wilson withdrew, his creativity spent. Forty years on, Pet Sounds wears better than Pepper, and this dazzling, complex, ethereal song seems a pinnacle of pop’s ambition. And you can hum every hook-drenched second of it. CSte
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
The Beach Boys
1966
The third single from Pet Sounds, Wouldn’t It Be Nice was backed with God Only Knows, which is pretty much as close to pop perfection as you can get on two sides of a seven-inch. The pure, bubblegum-layered harmonies perfectly capture the innocence of young lovers dreaming of a future together when “we could be married/ And then we’d be happy”.If only love was as pure and simple. LB
The Beatles
1964
Based on a chance remark by a chauffeur overheard by Paul McCartney, this US No 1 is not one of Lennon and McCartney’s greatest lyrics. However, its place here is earned by its melody and sound – a giddy rush of pure pleasure that echoes everyone’s experience of their first love. The “hold me/ love me” bridge is irresistible, and Lennon’s one sudden, needy “woah-oh!” ad-lib adds the crucial note of hormonal desperation. GM
Girl
The Beatles
1965
A significant landmark in the Fabs’ move away from themes of teen romance towards grittier sexual and emotional terrain, the shift is mirrored in the more sophisticated, minor-chord European cadences of the music. A couple of years before she appears in his life for real in the form of Yoko Ono, John Lennon is already submitting to the independent bohemian artist figure in song, the kind of girl you “want so much it makes you sorry”. GT
I Want to Hold Your Hand
The Beatles
1963
If it were possible to distil youth and joy into a pop song, it would sound very much like this. The single that broke the Beatles in America – its deceptively simple structure and unambiguous exuberance were the tonic the country needed to raise its spirits after JFK’s assassination – its immensity hasn’t diminished an iota in 46 years. The heart still surges at hearing that opening burst: “Oh, yeah, I’ll tell you something.” CS
She Loves You
The Beatles
1963
The Fab Four’s biggest-selling UK single remains one of the most exhilarating examples of pop joy ever recorded. A high point of Lennon and McCartney’s early, shared songwriting, the harmonised “yeah yeah yeah”s and wild “ooh”s became the early Beatles’ most recognisable sonic trademarks. But the lyric – inspired by a McCartney idea to write a song in the third person – is intriguingly odd, slyly suggesting that the singer has been doing the dirty with his friend’s heartbroken ex. GM
Something
The Beatles
1969
John Lennon called it the best song on Abbey Road. George Martin admitted that he was surprised Harrison had it in him. But Something, Harrison’s first Beatles single and possibly the band’s best love song, was ostensibly (although George was always ambivalent) about Harrison’s first wife, Pattie Boyd. A brooding, delicate delight that was championed by the world’s biggest bands, as covers by Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson and Frank Sinatra attest. WD
With a Little Help from My Friends
The Beatles
1967
Written specifically for Ringo to sing, A Little Help ... might be plodding and sentimental, but it retains a childlike charm that still makes it popular with younger generations of Beatles fans – even if its message of solidarity chimes somewhat with a band beginning to fall apart. Joe Cocker’s bombastic cover, though toe-curlingly earnest, is probably the definitive version, both to swaying veterans of Woodstock and fans of the Wonder Years. WD
Song for Whoever
The Beautiful South
1989
Paul Heaton and Dave Rotheray showed their cheeky side on the Beautiful South’s first single, the story of a cynical songwriter who dates girls in order to get material for his records: “I’ll love you till my pen runs dry.” If it weren’t so damned self-reflexive and unromantic, Song For Whoever could be a beautiful love song. As it was, the track turned Heaton and co into one of Britain’s best-loved pop bands. WD
How Deep is Your Love?
The Bee Gees
1977
While this gorgeous ballad is best experienced in its original setting – as the closing music to Saturday Night Fever, as Tony Manero teeters between his old life in Brooklyn and the promise of a new one in Manhattan – it’s just as wonderful on its own. Barry, Robin and Maurice rarely mustered dreamier harmonies; the song shimmers and swoons. And it’s all the more remarkable for having emerged when the band were mainly writing energetic disco tunes. CS
Big Star
1972
A sweet offer of a walk home from school – and the prospect of taking things further – is tinged with petulance in Alex Chilton’s much-covered snapshot of adolescence. “Won’t you tell your dad/ Get off my back,” he asks, with the pay-off – “Tell him what we said about Paint it Black” – setting up the generation gap. Note, also, how its gently picked guitars speed up slightly, increasing the tension as Chilton tempts his girlfriend to defy dad with the line, “Would you be an outlaw for my love?” MH
I’ll Take Care of You
Bobby “Blue” Bland
1959
One of the greatest singers America has produced, Bobby “Blue” Bland’s voice has a richness and depth that allows him to interpret almost any song. This version of a Brook Benton song is stripped to the bone; just a high-pitched keyboard accompanying the most inappropriately named vocalist ever as he explains to his inamorata why the smartest way to get over her recent dumping is to take up with old Bobby. Never has catching someone on the rebound sounded so noble. SY
David Bowie
1993
The hypnotic closer on Bowie’s underrated Black Tie White Noise album was first composed as a floating instrumental to be played at his wedding to Iman in 1992. Bowie later added lyrics, transforming the song into a declaration of deep joy from a man intent on changing his errant ways. “I’ll be a good boy,” he promises in his most majestic croon as bells chime around him. “I believe in magic/ Angel for life.” GT
Sit Down I Think I Love You
Buffalo Springfield
1966
Stephen Stills’s song catches the contradictions that made the Springfield exciting, and also led to their split. A delicate guitar part and a rough and ready solo elbow each other for attention; deliberate Beatles echoes burst through a consciously American riposte to the British invasion. And there’s the strange mixture of desperation and bullying in the words – a “sit down” with an implied “and shut up”. CSte
Everybody Needs Somebody to Love
Solomon Burke
1964
Solomon Burke squeezed his career as a soul singer in between his more permanent post as preacher. And this was the tune they’d play as they passed around the plate. With its chanted vocals, ad-libs and call-and-response chorus, this is as close as secular music gets to the sound of the black church. That hasn’t stopped brave souls from the Rolling Stones to the Blues Brothers having a stab at it. SY
R D Burman
1975
Translating from Hindi as “beloved, oh beloved”, RD Burman’s gypsy dance number originally soundtracked a band of bandits getting crunked at a desert rave-up in the seminal “curry western” Sholay. Yet with its snake charmer rhythms, melancholy vocal line and frenzied climax, Mehbooba’s declaration of intent took on a life of its own to become a mainstay on hipster playlists and Asian wedding after-parties the world over. Not bad for a song that began life as a homage to Demis Roussos. MM
Hounds of Love
Kate Bush
1985
Love as a prowling source of terror – “It’s in the trees!/ It’s coming!” – with the singer as quivering quarry. Musically, the title track of Bush’s 1985 masterpiece is perfectly in synch with the subject matter: the rhythm track pounds like a heartbeat in the throes of panic-stricken ecstasy, while the scything strings add a manic, compulsive element. And after three minutes of enthralling will-she-won’t-she? comes the magnificent climax: “I need la-la-la-la-la LOVE!” GT
The Man With the Child in His Eyes
Kate Bush
1978
Written when the Kent prodigy was just 16 and originally recorded in 1975, Kate Bush’s second single has always been surrounded by rumours that it was about one of her older mentors. Bush herself insisted that its sensual fairytale lyric was inspired by the childlike quality she perceived in all men, and especially her older brothers. But there’s still something subversive in this timeless piano ballad’s magical evocation of a girl’s secret, and possibly imaginary, love. GM
Kate Bush
1994
A song of wishful projection into a longed-for future – “Someday he’ll come along …” - George and Ira Gershwin’s standard was written for the 1927 musical Strike Up the Band and has been recorded by everyone from Ella Fitzgerald to Barbra Streisand. This 1994 visitation by Kate Bush, featuring the venerable Larry Adler on harmonica, is a sensuous treat, reinventing La Bush for four minutes as a trembling torch singer. GT
Love Me Forever
Carlton and the Shoes
1968
The rock steady era saw Jamaica adopting the close-harmony style of the soul vocal groups. Though it was dominated by their rivals at Treasure Isle, Studio One’s rhythms proved as durable as their songs. Love Me Forever had the superb vocals of Carlton and the Shoes (Carlton’s brothers, later members of the Abyssinians), but the sinuous bassline of the band led by Jackie Mittoo is unsurpassable. SY
The Dark End of the Street
James Carr
1967
Has the delicious treachery of illicit romance ever been articulated with such heartbreaking honesty? Written in 1967 by the Muscle Shoals pairing of Dan Penn and Chips Moman, it portrays two adulterers hiding in the shadows, hopelessly in love yet despising their weakness. Covered by the world and his ex-wife, Carr’s southern soul original remains definitive. Crucially, there’s no get-out clause: “They’re gonna find us someday,” he sings, with something like relief. GT
I Walk the Line
Johnny Cash
1956
Cash’s first US country No 1 is one of the great mystery love songs of its era. The lyrics are a simple, heartfelt testimony to staying faithful to one’s true love. But the song’s ghostly qualities lie in its train-track rhythm, Sun Studios echo and Cash’s voice, so deep it seems raised from the earth’s core. Cash admitted that his eerie hum at the beginning of each verse was so he could find his pitch for the constant key changes. GM
Ray Charles
1954
Although the lyrics are strictly old-school sexism, this was a revolutionary moment in American music. Critic Peter Guralnick called it “a blinding flash of light in which the millennium, all of a sudden and unannounced, had arrived.” Adapted from a gospel song, it had pentecostal fire, barroom energy and distinctly secular lyrics, Ray hymning a woman who lived way over town but still knew her place was in the home. No one quite knew how to categorise this fusion of gospel, jazz and r’n’b; years later they’d call it soul. SY
Stoned Out of My Mind
The Chi-Lites
1973
Co-written by Chi-Lites leader Eugene Record and his equally talented singing wife Barbara Acklin, this superficially uplifting funk ballad cleverly tapped into the drug culture with its misleading title. But Chicago’s finest sweet soul group were always concerned with pain rather than pleasure, and Record’s fey falsetto tells a masochistic tale of betrayal and female domination. “I was just a backseat driver in a car of love,” he bemoans, beautifully and tragically. GM
The Chi-Lites
1974
A throwback to the days of sharp suits and smooth harmonies, the Chi-Lites romanced a generation on the cusp of the disco revolution. That’s How Long is straight from the textbook, a spoken intro leading into the pledge of lifelong devotion delivered in a falsetto that could’ve flattened even Eddie Kendricks. The dramatic opening brass fanfare was sampled for Jay-Z’s biographical December 4th. SY
Stay Free
The Clash
1978
Generally dismissed for its lack of blood and fire, the Clash’s second album, Give ’Em Enough Rope, did at least throw up this towering account of Mick Jones’s friendship with his school chum Robin Crocker. The song’s final six words (“Go easy/ Step lightly/ Stay free”), sung by Jones himself, are among the most poignant in the Clash songbook, not least because Crocker would later serve a jail term, while his pal would go on to be celebrated as punk’s pre-eminent guitar hero. PM
Sam Cooke
1961
Putting his fate into the hands of the gods, Sam Cooke’s plea to Cupid is a gentle reminder that power over matters of the heart is not something that is offered to even the most mellifluous of soul singers. Cooke’s death in 1964 at the age of 33, when he was shot by the manager of a Hollywood motel, robbed us of a singer whose artistry was an exquisite combination of the tender and tough. SB
I’m in the Mood Again
Elvis Costello
2003
Recently parted from his second wife, in 2003 Costello recorded a clutch of sombre piano ballads detailing the split and his burgeoning relationship with jazz singer Diana Krall, now the third Mrs McManus. The final song on North is a lovely, Sinatra-esque thing, Costello wandering the streets of Manhattan at dawn, bewildered at stumbling upon amour once again. “You took the breath right out of me/ Now you’ll find it in the early hours in a lover’s song.” Bewitching. GT
Elvis Costello and the Attractions
1986
The compelling sound of a middle-aged serial shagger – our Declan? Oh yes! Admitting that he has finally met his Waterloo, in the no-nonsense form of ex-Pogues bassist and second wife Cait O’Riordan. “When we first met/ I didn’t know what to do,” he concedes. A highlight of 1986’s King of America, Costello later described it as “a rarity: a love song without an escape clause”. The game is well and truly up. GT
Then He Kissed Me
The Crystals
1963
Were those early teen-pop classics as innocent as they seemed? When, in the middle-eight of this definitive Phil Spector, Ellie Greenwich and Jeff Barry girl-group ballad, Dolores “LaLa” Brooks recalls, “He kissed me in a way that I’ve never been kissed before”, is she really just singing about snogging? This yearning expression of love’s young dream had its hyperactive twin in the Crystals’ equally adorable Da Doo Ron Ron. GM
Friday I’m in Love
The Cure
1992
The Cure’s prettiest pop hit is less a straight love song, and more a witty new take on rock’s traditional love of the weekend. Over galloping beat, piping keyboards and cascading guitars, Robert Smith casually dismisses the object of desire and everything else (including New Order on the opening “I don’t care if Monday’s blue”) apart from seeing “your shoes and your spirits rise” on a big, dressed-up Friday night out. The effect is both touching and warmly funny. GM
Pour Some Sugar on Me
Def Leppard
1987
From the massive reverb on the snare to the joyously ridiculous air-brushed sexuality, Pour Some Sugar on Me is one of the quintessential moments in 80s stadium metal innuendo. What’s brilliant is how the lyrics, which wouldn’t sound out of place in a Prince song – “You got the peaches, I got the cream/ Sweet to taste, saccharine” – are all undercut with the unimpeachable Britishness of a line like: “Do you take sugar? One lump or two?” RV
Born to Be With You
Dion
1975
If you were wondering about the honking saxes on the end of Duffy’s Distant Dreamer, they’re producer Bernard Butler’s homage to this Phil Spector classic, also a favourite of Bobby Gillespie and Jason Pierce. Forty musicians were in on the session, but here Spector’s wall of sound is a shaky edifice, perfectly matching teen-idol-turned-junkie Dion DiMucci’s fragility. Interestingly, though often assumed to be written by the autobiographically inclined DiMucci (he’s still married to the original Runaround Sue), the track is a cover of a 1956 Don Robertson hit for the Chordettes. MH
A Teenager in Love
Dion & the Belmonts
1960
The ne plus ultra of doo-wop ditties, written in 1959 by Brill Building maestros Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman; by 1960, three different versions of the song were in the UK top 10. Its plain depiction of the perennial vagaries of teen love – “One day I feel so happy/ Next day I feel so sad” – masked a less innocent picture. Dion DiMucci, a heroin addict since his mid-teens, checked into rehab not long after the single was released, and his pleading lead vocal lends the song extra edge. GT
Fats Domino
1956
Vincent Rose, Al Lewis and Larry Stock’s 1940 standard about making out in the country had already been recorded by the likes of Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller, Gene Autry and Louis Armstrong by the time avuncular New Orleans pianist/vocalist Antoine Dominique Domino transformed it into rock’s first multi-million-selling easy listening ballad. The lyric’s memories of adolescent sexual thrills and broken promises is made bereft of angst by the rolling piano and the warm grin of Fats’s rich voice. GM
Girl from the North Country
Bob Dylan
1963
A variation on the traditional Scarborough Fair, Dylan’s first great love song is partly a hymn to the freezing landscape of Hibbing, Minnesota, where he was raised, and partly a fond glance back to his 1958 high-school sweetheart Echo Helstrom, the girl he loved before the complications of the big city and subsequent fame set in. He would rarely sound so touchingly sincere again. GT
Bryan Ferry
1976
There are many classic pop songs about pre-wedding dreams and messy divorce. But the Roxy Music leader’s emphatic reworking of Wilbert Harrison’s 1962 r’n’b stomper is perhaps the only great dance-rock record about the less dramatic realities of keeping a marriage together. Saxophones wail and a woman unleashes a celebratory howl as the Geordie lounge lizard makes his case for the defence. Famously, supermodel girlfriend Jerry Hall left Ferry for Mick Jagger a year later. GM
Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye
Ella Fitzgerald
1956
The greatest American singer interprets the greatest American songwriter? It’s tough to argue against their credentials, especially when Virginia’s First Lady of Song effortlessly glides through Cole Porter’s cleverest of musical jokes: “There’s no love song finer/ But how strange the change” … and the music’s light turns to darkness, and literally changes key … “from major to minor”. Fitzgerald’s purity of tone and lightness of touch locates every nuance within this most melancholy of jazz standards. GM
Killing Me Softly With His Song
Roberta Flack
1973
The 1996 Fugees version was the bigger hit, but Flack’s original is far superior. Though she didn’t write it herself, she sings it as if her life depends on it, and the simple, piano-based arrangement underscores her quiet urgency. Flack started out singing jazz, and you can hear it here, in her restrained and elegant treatment. By contrast, the Fugees felt the song wasn’t complete without lumpen rapping, and their cover is well-nigh unlistenable. CS
I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)
Aretha Franklin
1967
No one peels back the layers of a standard love song like the Queen of Soul. Aretha’s first Atlantic single made her an overnight star and brought adult female sexuality to chart pop as she found both the lust and the agony in Ronnie Shannon’s blues-based ballad. The testimony of a woman masochistically addicted to a no-good, cheatin’ man, the song led the 1967 Aretha set still regarded by many as the finest soul album of all-time. GM
I Say A Little Prayer
Aretha Franklin
1968
The Queen of Soul singing Bacharach and David is a recipe for a universal anthem, irrespective of the outrageously quirky time signatures employed. Unquestionably an uplifting love song for many, this clever lyric holds a darker potential; never present and cherished by religious blessing, could it be the object of the song is either in mortal danger or no longer living? MR
Frankie Goes to Hollywood
1984
While the mention of the Hooded Claw, Penelope Pitstop’s nemesis, may suggest that this love song wasn’t entirely serious, its lovely, lavish arrangement and the sincerity of singer Holly Johnson’s delivery buoy it to the romantic stratosphere. Tribute to its effectiveness include the fact that it became Curly and Raquel’s song in Coronation Street, and that it causes a warm glow every December, when it originally got to No 1 before being flattened by Band Aid. AN
It’ll All Come Around
Patsy Gallant
1978
French-Canadian Gallant recorded several albums in French and English in the early 70s, but it was with her late 70s disco-influenced albums that she really found her voice. Her most famous song is From New York to LA, but the one to search out is this true lost classic. Four minutes of magnificent uplifting, soulful pop, over which Gallant lustily explains that, no matter what, “it’ll all come around, you know it always does ... because I love you.” If you only discover one song through this series, make it this one. LB
Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart
Judy Garland
1939
Written in 1934 by James Hanley, this exuberant evocation of how love seems to transform every aspect of the natural world – “’Twas like a breath of spring/ I heard a robin sing” – is timeless. Recorded by Garland in 1939, with its long, slow, luxurious intro leading into a finger-snapping coda, the song perfectly mirrors the initial hesitation and subsequent headlong abandon that defines falling in love. Björk should have a go at this. GT
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough
Marvin Gaye And Tammi Terrell
1967
This Ashford and Simpson mini-symphony was also recorded three times by Diana Ross; twice with the Supremes and later for her first major solo hit. While Ross’s 1970 version was a diva epic, the Marvin and Tammi version is a pop gem, capturing the optimism of young love with its tall tale of two people willing to climb mountains, traverse valleys and cross rivers just to be with each other. GM
You’re All I Need to Get By
Marvin Gaye And Tammi Terrell
1968
By the time husband-and-wife songwriting team Ashford and Simpson presented this intense love ballad to Motown’s most popular vocal duo, the pair had to record separately as Terrell was wheelchair-bound. The Philadelphia chanteuse had been diagnosed with a brain tumour after collapsing in Gaye’s arms onstage at a 1967 show. She died in 1970 at the age of just 24. In that context, the song’s evocation of love as lifeforce is an almost overwhelming experience. GM
Al Green
1974
As with every Green vocal performance, his extraordinary, surreal phrasings and improvisations both give instant truth to anything he sings while also rendering words somewhat superfluous. But Let’s Get Married takes Green’s weirdness to another level, as he pleads ecstatically for marriage while also admitting that he’s just bored, at one point adding: “Might as well.” Later that year, his already-married girlfriend poured boiling grits over his head and shot herself when he refused to marry her. GM
Let’s Stay Together
Al Green
1971
Green’s greatest moment and the most convincing song of devotion in the entire pop canon, if only because his vocal is ecstatic with romance, giddy with optimism and underpinned by quiet faith, that determination to see it through whether “times are good or bad, happy or sad”. He’s now a Reverend, of course – how could you marry in his church and not walk down the aisle to this? GG
Al Green
1972
Green’s early 70s work adds up to one long, soulful essay on the extreme highs and lows of lust and love. This strutting workout from the I’m Still in Love With You album revolves around a gritty, hypnotic guitar riff and Green’s stunning vocal growls, screams and sighs on the theme of “Love can make you do wrong/ Make you do right.” One suspects that wrong has the upper hand. GM
Sweet Child O’ Mine
Guns N’ Roses
1987
Axl Rose could go back into hibernation for another 17 years and still not better the rock majesty of Sweet Child O’ Mine. Slash’s opening riff, which he originally dismissed as filler, defines the sound of a band who could have ruled the world, and for a year or two, pretty much did. Rose wrote his “first positive love song” about his then girlfriend and, beneath the bombast and bacchanalia of the band themselves, it displayed a rare, tender glimpse into Rose’s psyche. WD
I’m Into Something Good
Herman’s Hermits
1964
Husband and wife songwriting team Gerry Goffin and Carole King were the champions of innocent love songs in the early 60s, providing hits for the Drifters, Gene Pitney and the Phil Spector stable. This tune was their first hit with a British band. The unthreatening, boyish grin of frontman Peter Noone, and the Manchester band’s sparky arrangement, sent it to No 1 in the UK. Undemanding but polished, its well crafted simplicity is the key to this song’s longevity. CSte
Whitney Houston
1985
It’s easy to forget now, but there was a time when Whitney Houston was everyone’s big sister. Sure, she had that voice, but her bright-eyed enthusiasm also turned her journey to the top of the charts into a rite of passage. So in this song, with Whitney exploring the common dilemma of quite what that boy is after, in which she claims to be “too shy, can’t speak”, she spoke for more than herself. Produced by Narada Michael Walden, the sound was that of 1985; synthesised flourishes, ersatz saxophone and 808 drum kicks. PMac
I’m So in Love
Leroy Hutson
1973
By 1973 Curtis Mayfield had totally immersed himself in continuing the hard-hitting social commentary lyric writing he had broken new ground with while a member of the Impressions. The love ballads were left to his Curtom proteges, of which Hutson is the best and least acknowledged. Heralding the start of his sublime debut album, this track effortlessly depicts the blissful confusion of being in love. MR
The Isley Brothers
1973
Although Summer Breeze notionally celebrates the weather, it’s really about domestic bliss, the usual furniture of a walk home on a gorgeous day building to a sustained pitch of excitement as our five-o’clock-hero returns to a hot meal and a cuddle from the one he loves. It took a funk band to make this ballad by hippie duo Seals and Croft really rock. Summer Breeze was the Ohio clan at the height of their fusion thang, Ernie’s guitar solo as much a feature as Ronald’s falsetto. SY
Are You Ready For Love
Elton John
1979
In 1977, Elton John started work on a soul album with legendary Philadelphia producer Thom Bell (the Spinners, the Stylistics, the Delfonics). It came to nothing. Two years later, he reworked the sessions for a three-track EP, The Thom Bell Sessions, scoring a minor hit with Mama Can’t Buy You Love. But it wasn’t until 2003 when dance DJ Justin Robertson “rediscovered” the B-side that Are You Ready For Love’s killer pairing of pop hook and disco groove achieved its full potential, reaching No 1. CC
Paul McCartney and Wings
1973
Macca’s never been afraid to tell it like it is. The trouble for his detractors is that for most of his career that’s meant he’s been writing about being deeply in love with his wife. Not very rock’n’roll, really – but then again, after all the songs about rebellion and teenage angst, maybe domestic bliss is quite a radical thing to sing about. It’s like falling asleep in front of a large fire, chez McCartney. RV
90% of Me is You
Gwen McRae
1974
Overshadowed at the time by McCrae’s Rockin’ Chair, and even more so by hubby George’s massive international hit, Rock Your Baby, 90% of Me Is You had to wait until the 80s to get noticed. It got its afterlife on the British rare groove scene, due recognition of its perfect composition. The strings and groove foretold the arrival of disco, the lyrics a tale of devotion bordering on submission, chilling in the light of later claims that she was beaten by her husband. SY
Merrilee and the Turnabouts
1968
More than 30 artists have recorded this tune written by Wild Thing songwriter Chip Taylor, including the Pretenders, Olivia Newton-John and Nina Simone. The best known is country singer Juice Newton’s 1981 power ballad. The definitive version, however, is Merrilee and the Turnabouts’ 1968 original. Merrilee Rush’s bittersweet vocal transforms the lyrics about a one-night stand from male fantasy into an ambiguous human encounter. The real stroke of genius is that it’s not clear who’s taken advantage of whom. CC
Can’t Get You Out of My Head
Kylie Minogue
2001
Kylie’s ill-fated spell at Deconstruction Records saw the artist formerly known as “Charlene off Neighbours” paired with the likes of Saint Etienne, Pet Shop Boys and Brothers in Rhythm in an attempt to make her cool. Ironic, then, that it took a track written and produced in the shed of Mud’s Rob Davis to truly bring out the electro-pop diva in her (she turned up with a packed lunch, apparently). It’s pure pop alchemy: those insistent bleeps effortlessly complementing the lyric’s obsessive sentiment. MH
Van Morrison
1968
The lynchpin of Astral Weeks is one long goodbye, as much a song of love for a lost time and place as for a person. The ravenous card-playing drag queen of the title may be a composite hewn from various Belfast beatniks, but that doesn’t mean you can’t see her. After 10 minutes of rapturous poetry – “throwing pennies at the bridges down below” - Morrison finally loses himself in the “love that loves to love”. Mesmeric. GT
You’ve Got a Friend
Randy Newman
1995
Cult genius/mainstream songwriter, lovable failure/noted film composer, Randy Newman’s idiosyncratic career finally reached household name status in 1995 with this Oscar-nominated track. Co-written with Lyle Lovett, it was ostensibly about the friendship between a boy and his toy cowboy, but in reality was a charming ode to comradeship that, like Toy Story, the film it soundtracked, broke from the realms of kids’ entertainment and into the pop canon. WD
Gram Parsons
1973
“He didn’t mind if she wasn’t very pretty/ For deep inside his heart he knew she was the only one.” Sweetly judged romance from the pioneering king of 70s country rock, telling the story of a farming couple. The late Gram Parsons is on mellow form here on this track from his debut solo album GP, almost duetting with the pedal steel guitar that runs through the song as he hits the chorus: “She sure could sing.” So could he . RV
I Will Always Love You
Dolly Parton
1974
Apparently, someone else had a hit with this, but it’s Dolly’s version that ought to be the one played at funerals and – inappropriately – at weddings. Written about one-time mentor and partner Porter Wagoner, Dolly’s heartbreaking version was a Billboard country No 1, but a relatively minor hit for the queen of country. It wasn’t of course until the huge success of Whitney Houston and her Bodyguard that the track became as large as its own bombastic chorus. WD
Wilson Pickett
1967
One of the most beautiful soul ballads ever recorded, this was just one of several Bobby Womack-penned numbers Pickett recorded while at Atlantic in the late 60s and, like Aretha Franklin material of the same period, is elevated to ethereal status by Womack’s own, uniquely delicate guitar playing. The simplistic lyric avoids trying to detail the indescribable, but the evident glee and profoundly emotive swells of brass and backing vocals let you know he’s feeling the real thing. MR
She is Beyond Good and Evil
The Pop Group
1979
The fertile post-punk scene threw up some ambitious singles but none as out-there as the Pop Group’s extraordinary debut. A title borrowed from Fredrich Nietzsche, and an abrasive, strung-out backdrop that melded punk, funk, dub-reggae and free jazz, She is Beyond Good and Evil still sounds like a blueprint for the future. That no one, not even the Pop Group, ran with the possibilities therein is a testament to the song’s singular beauty. SOH
Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love
Cole Porter
1928
If the foundation of pop music is the well-turned sexual euphemism, then this is the daddy of them all. Cole Porter’s number – highly amusing, if reasonably obscure to modern ears (what’s “shad roe”?) – makes quite clear that every different type of species does “it” in a fashion so jovial and sprightly it would seem a positive shame to introduce the word “sex”. Numerous covers, and various reworkings (most notably by Noël Coward), have kept the song alive, even if it might now seem most striking for its quaintness. PMac
Can’t Help Falling in Love
Elvis Presley
1961
This stately signature Elvis ballad was written by George Weiss, Hugo Peretti and Luigi Creatore, based upon the lilting melody of Jean Paul Egide Martini’s 1780 classical piece Plaisir d’Amour. Despite all those European art credentials, it originally surfaced on Blue Hawaii, the first of Elvis’s trashy travelogue movies. Nevertheless, the song’s operatic grandeur and Presley’s assured vocal made it his most popular ballad – and the last song The King performed onstage before his death in 1977. GM
Elvis Presley
1956
A song so good they named a movie after it, Love Me Tender derived from unusual sources. The melody was lifted from a civil war ballad, Aura Lee (or the Maid with Golden Hair), and the lyrics composed by one Ken Darby, who had worked on the soundtrack for Elvis’s film debut, originally entitled The Reno Brothers. It was Elvis’s vocals, though, that made the song more than the sum of its parts; half-seduction, half-lullaby, their dreamy, woozy quality provided the soundtrack to many breathless nights in the parents’ Cadillac. PMac
I’ll Stand By You
The Pretenders
1994
Classic pop ballads evoke that “Ooh, where have I heard this before?” feeling on first listen. Always a strong singles band, the Pretenders’ swelling tale of unswerving loyalty (“Nothing you confess/ Could make me love you less”), co-written with Like a Virgin veterans Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, treads that fine line between wedding reception schmaltz and fist-in-the-air defiance with a consummate, understated ease. Even a Children in Need version by Girls Aloud couldn’t wreck this one, although they gave it their best shot. SM
The Proclaimers
1994
“Ah love ye/ And ah wanna be with ye!” There is a time for finely etched poetry, and there is a time for Scottish twins to get their glasses all steamed up with the prospect of frogmarching some lucky lass down the aisle. This wonderful, joyous stomp celebrates the often unfashionable tradition of getting hitched: “Yeah, it’s just a piece of paper/ But it says I love you.” A proper love song. GT
You’re My Best Friend
Queen
1975
Even Queen’s most fanatical worshippers might not list sincerity among Freddie Mercury and co’s greatest qualities. So step up bassist John Deacon, who wrote this wonderfully sincere tribute to his wife Veronica while trying to learn how to play the Wurlitzer electric piano. Mercury matches him all the way, too, as he bathes the song in complex, lilting Beach Boys-style harmonies and sings the lead with uncharacteristic restraint. It’s a rare rock song that concludes “I’m happy at home”, and means it. GM
A R Rahman
1995
Songs about love across the barricades delivered in a coquettish fashion are something of a staple in Bollywood. Which is why Kehna Hi Kya by AR Rahman – who last month won two Oscars (Best Original Score and Best Original Song) for Slumdog Millionaire – is all the more extraordinary. With its extravagant vocal gymnastics and qawwali-esqe devotional wails, this tale of inter-religious attraction set a new standard and leaves you in no doubt that Rahman deserves his “India’s greatest living composer” tag. MM
Unchained Melody
The Righteous Brothers
1965
Alex North and Hy Zaret’s Unchained Melody, written for obscure prison film Unchained, is said to have spawned more than 500 cover versions, including four UK No 1s. The definitive version, whatever Robson and Jerome fans may claim, remains the Righteous Brothers’. Actually sung solo by Bobby Hatfield, the 1965 Phil Spector production was the 10th major release of the track and remains the favourite version of everyone who isn’t Gareth Gates. WD
Rihanna
2007
It wasn’t the wettest summer on record that kept this record at No 1 for 10 weeks, but the fact that it was a full-throated declaration of loyalty and devotion, delivered with an admirable lack of sentiment and set to buzzsaw synths and beats that sounded like thunderclaps. Even Jay-Z’s dull rap couldn’t stop a hook that went “ella-ella-ella” and which Rihanna delivered with a lethal accuracy absent from your average weather report. AN
You’ve Really Got a Hold On Me
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
1962
Unashamedly grown-up stuff, even for Motown in 1962. The opening line sets the anguished tone – “I don’t like you, but I love you” – leading into an emotionally and musically complex rake around the dangerous attractions of stone-bad love. Robinson wrote this serpentine song, and he imbues it with an exquisite helplessness that is all his own. The 1963 Beatles version, on the other hand, makes up in sheer passion what it lacks in nuance. GT
The Shangri-Las
1964
The Shangri-Las epitomised teenage yearning but added a gritty, tough-girl twist. This 1964 number is one of the great teen tragedy songs, an endearing mixture of innocence and poignancy that ends with Jimmy, a boy from “the wrong side of the tracks”, dying in a motorbike crash after Betty dumps him at the behest of her parents. It makes perfect listening for any girl who has ever had her heart strings twanged by a bad boy. SB
Will You Love Me Tomorrow?
The Shirelles
1961
The first major hit for Brill Building songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King was also the first girl-group single to hit No 1 in America. And no subsequent song has captured the emotional risk of teenage sex with such terror and desire. Shirley Owens’s voice aches with youthful vulnerability, but when Carole King covered her own song in singer-songwriter style on her 1971 album, Tapestry, the song proved heartbreakingly relevant to women of all ages. GM
Simon and Garfunkel
1970
A hymn to friendship that, ironically, exposed simmering tensions: Simon instantly regretted allowing Garfunkel to sing the song solo and thus hog the limelight on their biggest hit, and they split soon after. The central image was inspired by the line “I’ll be your bridge over deep water, if you trust in me”, taken from the gospel song Oh Mary. The quasi-religious flavour is preserved in the churchy piano chords and soaring vocal, and remains moving, despite over-exposure. GT
Fly Me to the Moon
Frank Sinatra
1966
There are numerous versions of this ebullient standard, including one by – shudder – Westlife, but the definitive Fly Me … is Sinatra’s (of his various recordings of it, the one to hear is on the Sinatra at the Sands album). This is the man at his most freewheeling and breezy: he was in his prime, the vocal cords were mature but supple, he was about to marry 21-year-old Mia Farrow; accordingly, this song has a marvellous spring in its step. CS
Get Me to the Church On Time
Frank Sinatra
1966
Originally written for My Fair Lady and later recorded by Sinatra, this is a roguish, rambunctious pre-nuptials farewell to the old days of late nights, dancing and smooching, looking forward to a new life of responsible wedded bliss. The intentions are sound and instantly recognisable: let me enjoy my final spree, don’t let me do anything too stupid, and for Pete’s sake, get me to the church on time. GT
Frank Sinatra
1955
Deeply conservative it may be – who the hell says you can’t have one without the other? – but this 1955 Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen classic is worth celebrating for its jaunty rhythm and sparkling rhyme schemes: marriage/disparage; gentry/elementary. And dissenters can take comfort in the fact that its central message was subverted as the theme to mordant US comedy Married With Children. GT
True Love Travels on a Gravel Road
Percy Sledge
1969
Percy is a southern soul singer permanently on the cusp of tears, one who could make a winning lottery ticket sound like personal tragedy. Small wonder his take on a ballad about a long, true romance eliminates the positive and accentuates the negative, as if the woman who’s stuck by him through thin and thin is about to run off with the church mouse while the choir mocks him in the background. An epic about snatching misery from the jaws of happiness. SY
Patti Smith
1979
The elliptical Smith rarely writes straightforward love songs; this is one of them. Dedicated to then-husband-to-be Fred “Sonic” Smith, it’s one of her more tuneful productions, but the selling point is the lyric, which translates the feeling of being in love into some of rock’s most beautiful poetry: “Night of wonder for us to keep/ Set our sails, channel out deep/ After the rapture, two hearts meet/ Mine entwined in a single beat.” CS
There is a Light That Never Goes Out
The Smiths
1986
This sublime ballad from The Queen is Dead defines the multi-dimensional brilliance of Morrissey’s lyrics. The poetic longing makes you cry; the black comedy of the chorus makes you laugh. But the delirious melodrama also implies that love and death are identical objects of desire. While Moz spins your head with “the pleasure and privilege” of being mown down by double-decker buses and 10-ton trucks, Johnny Marr’s glistening guitars and exquisite orchestral arrangement cast their own mystical spell. GM
I Got You Babe
Sonny and Cher
1965
Young love is a staple of pop music. But rarely have circumstances combined with sentiments so serendipitously as in Sonny and Cher’s breakthrough hit. Sonny, 22 at the time, met Cher, then 16, in a cafe: you can hear their elders saying that their love “won’t pay the rent”. But it did – as these fake hippie alumni of Phil Spector’s studio built a career on a winning song that was both utterly contrived – Sonny stole the “babe” from Bob Dylan and the counterculture, for one – and totally believable. KE
You Gotta Come a Little Closer
Soul Brothers Six
1973
The Philly soul act are known for 1967’s Some Kind of Wonderful, their only hit, but this seductive cut, a flamboyant entreaty to an aloof lover, is an unexpected triumph. Singer John Ellison’s gospel-suffused vocals have an affirmational lustre, with just the right injection of libidinous intent. Set to a funky groove and sassy brass, it’s hard to see how any potential inamorato could resist his plea. SB
Wannabe
The Spice Girls
1996
Sporty, Scary, Baby, Posh and Ginger’s opening salvo was a straight-on-target bullet at the heart of female solidarity. Boyfriends? Largely rubbish. Gal pals? Ace! Two and a half minutes of relentless frivolity, Wannabe introduced the brilliantly nonsense phrase “zigga-zig-ah!” into the lyrical lexicon and gifted the world the first glimpse of Victoria Beckham [then Adams]’s pout – an enduring commercial currency nobody could have possibly foreseen. For its duration, the five were not just invincible, they even seemed to rather like each other. PF
The Supremes
1970
The post-Diana Supremes enjoyed diminishing returns, but among their few 70s hits was Stoned Love, easily the equal of anything recorded with La Ross. Written by Frank Wilson, it managed to take this most carefully conservative of groups into the hippie era without compromising their pop appeal. Despite the druggy wink of the title and its cunning plan to “bring fighting to an end”, this was prime Motown pop-soul with an added dose of stringed-up sophistication. SY
You Can’t Hurry Love
The Supremes
1966
A much-loved example of the Supremes’ irresistible innocence, this Holland-Dozier-Holland classic remains a staple of any self-respecting girl-group DJ set. The lyric makes the case for patience and the sound advice of a girl’s loving mum, but it’s also about Diana Ross’s unique ability to express youthful longing, and the peerless Funk Brothers rhythm section of Benny Benjamin and James Jamerson creating one of the most imitated uptempo dance riffs in pop history. GM
Why Do Fools Fall in Love?
The Teenagers featuring Frankie Lymon
1956
On the day in 1955 when Harlem doo-wop group the Teenagers auditioned for Gee Records, their leader Herman Santiago fell ill. Up stepped 13-year-old boy soprano Lymon and the rest is pop infamy. Why Do Fools … set the standard for teen idols singing about the pain of love like bruised adults, and for doo-wop as the acceptable black face of early rock. Despite the clean teen image, Lymon got into heroin and was dead by the age of 25. GM
Twinkle
1964
Lynn Annette Ripley, aka Twinkle, out-outraged the Sex Pistols by getting herself banned by the BBC at the tender age of 16. The haunting debut single from the Surbiton singer-songwriter went top 5 in Britain despite adult horror at its morbid tale of a lovers’ tiff leading the titular boyfriend to ride off on his motorcycle to his inevitable death. Twinkle’s plea for him to “wait at the gate of heaven for me” is the clue to Morrissey’s admiration. GM
Mad About the Boy
Dinah Washington
1952
Written by cultural polymath Noël Coward for the 1932 revue Words and Music, this has it all: unrequited love, the problems kicked up by sexual feelings between the young and the more mature, and – in Coward’s version – explicit homosexual yearning. The tortuous impossibility that defines the song is fully realised by Washington’s 1952 recording, arranged by Quincy Jones and full of blue notes, soul and real longing. GT
Jimmy Webb
1968
Stringing telegraph cables across the bread belt of the US is hardly the stuff of conventional romance. And yet the song Webb composed for Glen Campbell evokes the wistful loneliness of a travelling engineer, imagining he hears his love “singing in the wires”. Backing up the country existentialism are violins, stabbing out a morse code, and Webb’s own organ, mimicking the hum and whine of analogue telecommunications. KE
You Do Something to Me
Paul Weller
1995
Generally thought of as the archetypal lad rocker rather than touching balladeer, the Modfather actually possesses a well-developed sensitive side, in evidence since English Rose on 1978’s All Mod Cons. From 1995’s Stanley Road, this bittersweet analysis of romantic obsession is his definitive slowie, its apparent sentimentality tempered by the realisation that the object of his desire isn’t exactly perfect, acknowledging: “You do something wonderful, then chase it all away.” GG
Music to Watch Girls By
Andy Williams
1967
In 1967, as pop entered its most psychedelic stage, family-friendly pin-up Andy Williams released a single so incongruously chirpy that it seemed to have flown in from the mid-50s. In its way, though, Music to Watch Girls By reflected its era. Its optimism was very much of the 60s, when kicking back and checking out the girls in their increasingly-mini miniskirts kept men happily occupied. Though a period piece now, the tune is still a delight. CS
Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)
Frank Wilson
1966
Northern soul fans’ obsession with rarity often comes at the expense of quality. But in Do I Love You both merge into the holy grail of collectors’ soul. Frank Wilson was a Motown producer-songwriter whose solo career was stillborn with this one record, promos of which were melted down. But it’s a glorious, if raw affirmation of everything the label was about: high-speed drums, delirious chorus and the thrill of love dripping from every pore. One copy of the record sold in 1996 for a reputed £15,000. SY
Neil Young
1977
Young’s guitar classic became a much-requested highlight of The Old Grey Whistle Test, with footage of the (even then) grizzled Canadian battling against a wind machine while soloing to infinity and beyond. But it’s the match of Young’s frenzied playing and the lyrics that gives the song its bite. Anyone could write of being “blown away” by the hurricane of love. “I want to love you but I’m getting blown away” is a much more arresting thought. Young revamped it for pump organ in 1993: it’s just as good that way. CS
Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Neil Young
1970
Those raised on Saint Etienne’s epochal dance version might initially balk at the funereal tempo, but they’re usually won over by the time Stephen Stills’s languid harmonies come round. Written for Graham Nash after his break-up with Joni Mitchell, in the lyric Young advocates a retreat into a child’s world rather than taking a gamble on love, before suggesting he’d like to “call” his damaged friend to see if he could “come out”. It’s a typically heartfelt and understated piece of songwriting. MH