What’s your love song?

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

  –William Shakespeare

So here I am, on the eve of Valentine’s Day, searching the Internet for the best love songs of all time. I have my own choices, of course. I simply wanted them validated against what other sources say.

While my intention is serious, my search results, apparently, are not. Whoever put some of those listings together clearly have a weird concept of what a love song is.  “The Pina Colada Song” and Cyndi Lauper’s “Time after Time”? About.com counts them among the Top 100!  Something wrong with my parameters perhaps, so even if it felt like bashing my own ego, I had to refine my search to ‘top love songs for oldies (or baby boomers).’

This time the titles look like a compilation of Frank Sinatra covers, which is rather predictable though more acceptable because I love Ol’ Blue Eyes. On the upside, most of the results now include one of my top favorites, “At Last” by Etta James. Christina Aguilera and Beyoncé have tried to match her fantastic pipes, but you be the judge.

With its beautiful melody, it is easy to see why “The Way You Look Tonight” has become a standard. This Academy Award winner for Best Original Song in 1936 has been given different spins by many great singers including Tony Bennett, Andy Williams, The Lettermen, and more recently Michael Bublé, Kris Allen and Adam Levine. Again, it’s obviously my vintage showing, but my personal choice is still Frank “The Voice” Sinatra.

Of course, there’s no point writing this post without including that classic song from Casablanca. Ask Sam to play it again and each time he does, it will be wonderful because “the world will always welcome lovers, as time goes by.”

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