Ah, the pressure of finding the best love songs for Valentine’s Day. After all, there are so many to choose from. Each year around the 14th of February, publishers, radio stations and tv shows alike try to find out what the best love song ever is. Yet, year after year, they fail to do so.
Let’s pause here for a second. How can they fail? After all, they produce such nice lists like best-selling love songs until 2020 or the 50 best love songs of all time. All true. All valid. But also, all very impersonal. They are still a great way to discover new songs, but these lists are based on mere facts and cold numbers. Or they are just curated by the wisdom of the crowd. If so many people like it, it must be good, right? Wrong. So let’s rewind this.
Valentine’s Day is all about love. And most of the time, it’s an ode to romantic love specifically. There’s only one problem. While some of us are fans of heart shaped-everything, others strongly oppose the idea of getting fuzzy feelings, wearing rose-colored glasses, or falling for head-over-heels romance. And that’s absolutely fine. I wouldn’t go as far as saying Freud got it right when he treated lovesickness as a serious illness, but there are many kinds of love. And just as many different ways to express it.
21 different people, 21 different love songs
So, we’ve conducted a little experiment in our office. 20 women and 20 men from 15 different nationalities with an average age of 27 were asked to share their favorite love song. Let me fast forward straight to the conclusion: There was no consensus on what the best love song is. Not even a specific genre was consistent. Over 50-year-old classics like ‘My Girl’ from the Temptations were just as happily submitted as modern songs like ‘Savage love’ from Jason Derulo. Even a metal ballad from Opeth made the list. Just check out the Dundle Valentine’s Day ‘21 playlist on Spotify to see how greatly music tastes can differ. It’s safe to say, love songs polarize. Just like with Christmas music, you either love it or you hate it. But it is not the quality of a song that determines that. It’s all about the emotional response it triggers within you. Can you already guess what I’m hinting at? The key to finding the best love song ever — is you.
Only you can make the perfect playlist
Remember, back in the day, when specially curated mixtapes were the ultimate currency of love and friendship? No one lived through the ’90s without making or receiving a cassette tape or a self-burned CD. Back then, we knew that the best songs are, and always have been, those that hold a special meaning to us. The good news is, this is still true today. The art of creating the perfect mixtapes is far from dead because Spotify playlists are the new mixtapes!
Create a unique Valentine’s gift to build a memory that lasts
Just collect songs that already mean something to you both and turn them into a Spotify playlist. Spend the day listening to music that allows you to relive those shared memories. It doesn’t have to be love songs. Anything goes, as long as it is special to you.
Just starting out and don’t have many shared memories yet? No problem at all. If you’ve used Spotify Premium in the last year, you will have a list of your top songs of 2020. There’s nothing more personal than revealing your music library to another! But it doesn’t have to be about looking back either. You could also create your personal soundtrack for 2021. How do you want your year to sound? Spotify playlists make it incredibly easy to create a unique gift that lasts. Giving your Valentine something they can pause, play and repeat as often as they like will surely keep you in their thoughts!
