By The Epigram Music Team
Whether you're a hopeless romantic or a sworn Valentine’s skeptic, February 14th rolls around like clockwork – bringing with it flowers, overpriced chocolate, and the eternal debate over what the day means for a ‘situationship’. We’ve compiled the perfect soundtrack – so grab your wine, and let’s get into the songs that make Cupid’s job easier.
Bizzare Love Triangle - New Order
By Benji Chapman, Music Editor
Hooky's ambling bassline on New Order's 1986 hit 'Bizzare Love Triangle' floats in the song's atmosphere among the pounding drum machine and synthesisers, much like the distracted thoughts of someone in love. The titular bizzareness of this love, we realise soon, is in the 'confusion' of its own source.
But with the expansive strings of the chorus welcoming us to let down our defences and just dance, the song is rather an affirmative celebration of the introspective side of love that comes with getting to know another person's most intimate - and confusing - aspects. So whether you're taken or not this Valentines, 'get down on your knees and pray', and get on the dancefloor!
Thank You - Led Zeppelin
By Amélie Peters, Music Subeditor
Written by Robert Plant for Maureen Wilson, his future wife, is what I believe to be one of the most romantic songs of all time. It features lyrics so terribly devout, exquisite in their beauty; at its core the song is a musical ode to the person Plant loved so deeply.
Devoted and so adoring are the zealous sincerity of the lyrics, 'If mountains crumble into the sea, There will still be you and me'. It makes the romantic machinations of the current generation and their 'u up?' texts look as underwhelming as they actually are.
Lovesong - The Cure
By Aditi Hrisheekesh, Co-Deputy Music Editor
This song is a straight-up love letter. The bass pulses and the guitar line are, of course, haunting, leaning into their well-oiled gothic edge – yet Robert Smith’s voice is vulnerable and intoxicating, making each ‘however far away, I will always love you’ feel like a gut punch (whether positive or not).
Written for his then fiancée Mary, Smith himself described it as an ‘open show of emotion’ in 1989 – a sort of honesty that feels timeless.
Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow - Matt Maltese
By Sophie Scannell, Music Subeditor
Not diving into relationship territory this Valentine's Day because you're still 'chronically affected by flashbacks'? Maltese's newest release lingers on the inescapable memories of past lovers, hanging onto every last sensory relic of a physical intertwinement that is no longer.
Teetering on the already blurred line of what a 'love song' may entail, the singer shamefully admits how at any beck and call they would come running right back. Some may call it outright desperation, others a perfectly reasonable, albeit too tight, grip on the past - both perfectly healthy I'm sure!
get him back! - Olivia Rodrigo
By Megan Foulk, Co-Deputy Music Editor
Perhaps not an appropriate soundtrack to your candle-lit dinner, this one is for everyone hosting a Galentines get-together or spending the evening doing breakup admin - clearing your camera roll, changing your lockscreen, amending your Facebook relationship status if you were born pre-Millenium.
Better screamed rather than sung, Rodrigo's acid lyrics fizz over crunching bass and allow for candy-sweet catharsis. If the person that wronged you lives within a one kilometre radius, consider opening the bathroom window and turning this one up whilst you're in the shower, just make sure you warn your housemates first.
She's On My Mind - Romy
By Benji Chapman, Music Editor
Another ex-member of the xx who has veered into a more club-influenced solo career, Romy's ecstatic and often romantic dance music celebrates the sense of welcome she felt as a young queer woman in the gay bars and clubs she frequented when uncovering the genre for the first time.
In this sense, 'She's On My Mind' is a passionate revisitation of the musician's own nostalgia; one which equally revisists one of the most meaningful experiences anyone can live through - meeting their partner. With an explosive chorus, this song embodies the feeling of letting your hair down and baring yourself raw to your lover, captured sharply by Romy's delivery and expert production.
I Need You (Live At The Sydney Opera House) - Nick Cave
By Amélie Peters, Music Subeditor
Despondent despairing and deliriously yearning, a song filled with such hopelessness and loss, it so perfectly captures the depth of feeling and need associated with soulmates.
The song is so driven by love but simultaneously so love lost, what makes it so poignant and affecting is hearing the depth of grief in his voice. This why the live version is so considerably better, wrapped up in the moment you hear, as if Cave himself is telling you the deep emotion he feels.
The sadness and romantic need in this song probably isn't ideal for a first date (if you played this, they would run, and rightfully so) but captures something so lovely in its truthfulness that it could make even a nihilist believe in love.
Kiss Me - Sixpence None The Richer
By Aditi Hrisheekesh, Co-Deputy Music Editor
It’s sweet, it’s dreamy, and it wears its heart on its sleeve. Leigh Nash’s feather-light vocals do most of the heavy lifting, adding just the right amount of whimsical brilliance without veering into corny territory.
There’s this intoxicating desperation that undercuts the melody, yet it still oozes the unabashed romance you’d see in a ‘90s rom-com. It’s got an innocent, butterfly-inducing soundscape, like the thrill of a first kiss.
We Found Love - Palma Violets
By Sophie Scannell, Music Subeditor
Arguably a better pick for February 15th, instead, 'We Found Love' sounds like a clouded recollection of the head-banging, stranger-snogging night before, with however much hangxiety (or lack-there-of!) that may come with.
The accompanying music video is no better at trying to expel memories of last night to the deep unconscious. A flummoxed party-goer weaves his way in and around a raucous scene of sweaty dancing, collapsed bodies tangled on a sofa, and horrifically up-close make-out shots.
The song corners you into reliving all your drunken nights out at once, particularly the part where you meet the not-so-special someone that leads you to conclude, 'You are my serpentine,/ But I'll never look you in the eyes again/ You are my one divine,/ But I'll never look you in the eyes again'.
It Ain't Me Babe - Joan Baez
By Megan Foulk, Co-Deputy Music Editor
The ultimate lament for the chronically insufferable, everyone knows Dylan sounds better when sung by Baez. Beautifully covered by the woman who famously admitted of Dylan 'I was bowled over. I never thought anything so powerful could come out of that little toad' (an undeniably great insult worth saving for future use), 'It Ain't Me Babe' is both gut-wrenchingly melancholic and infectiously petty.
If three minutes twenty isn't enough wallow time, you can always follow by alternating Joan's 'To Bobby' and Dylan's 'Visions of Johanna' for some double sided navel gazing.
Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem
By Benji Chapman, Music Editor
In 2023, Epigram reported that around 57% of Bristol University students were in relationships. This one is for the 43%.
Whether you look back on your previous (if existent) relationship bitterly, with fondness, or so unbearably that it's near impossible to clear your camera roll, the ups and downs of any relationship are part of the package. Nobody, it seems, understands this fact better than James Murphy.
Luna - The Smashing Pumpkins
By Aditi Hrisheekesh, Co-Deputy Music Editor
It’s undeniably intimate – Billy Corgan’s voice is, for once, tender. The bass is low and steady, feeling pulled back unlike their heavy-hitting classics. There’s a simplicity to it, with the repeated refrain ‘I’m in love with you’ creating a prolonged moment of calm.
A soft, lilting song, like a gentle yearning from afar, somehow understated yet completely absorbing. Warm, woozy guitars drift through the track, giving it a relaxed, almost swaying feel. And the title Luna feels apt, painting a love that is both luminous and distant, yet steadily lingering.
Young Love (Feat. Laura Marling) - Mystery Jets
By Sophie Scannell, Music Subeditor
Old but gold, this peppy, sickeningly-indie guitar loop casts a nostalgic spell over the cauldron that is adolescent love, bubbling with an awkward potion of inexplicable excitement and outright cluelessness in equal measure.
Especially heart-warming about the song is its feature, Laura Marling, whose most recent musical endeavor, a whopping seventeen years on, is a love-letter to her newborn baby and an overwhelmingly blissful new family life that she gushes over in her 2024 album, Patterns in Repeat.
Though undeniably messy, it's reassuring to know that the confusing mind field that is 'young love' can evolve to find its home in equally beautiful, yet maybe still confusing, places.
No Other Way - Paolo Nutini
By Megan Foulk, Co-Deputy Music Editor
If the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special didn't kickstart a Paolo resurgence for you then the arrival of February 14th definitely will. A connoisseur in articulating matters of the heart, 'No Other Way' feels like jabbing a salted finger through the roof of a freshly healed wound.
An opportunity for pensive reflection for all relationship partakers and a knife-twisting reminder of solitude for the single population, the slow burn and heady climax - a non-negotiable of all great love songs - will have you howling into your pillow. Rest assured, Paolo can always get you there if no one else will.
Featured Image: Megan FoulkWhich of these songs will you be belting out this Valentine's Day?
