Featured series 
Campus & Community
What’s the greatest love song of all time?
Faculty and administrators share their favorites in honor of Valentine’s Day
Few things capture the sweetness and agony of love quite like a great song. In honor of Valentine’s Day, we asked Harvard faculty and administrators to share their favorites. The recommendations range from optimistic pop bangers to tender ballads and gut-wrenching goodbyes. Whether you’re looking for a soundtrack to slow dance or cry to this weekend, this playlist of suggestions has you covered:
“I Choose You” — The SteelDrivers (2020)
Quinn White
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
White, whose academic work explores the ethics of interpersonal relationships and of love, favors this one partly due to a personal connection: He and his wife chose this one for their wedding.
“There’s a tempting, but deeply wrong-headed way of thinking about love as something that happens to us,” White said. “That’s often reflected in the way we talk about being ‘lovestruck’ — that there’s something that is not a product of our agency in romantic connection, we don’t choose the people that we’re romantically or sexually attracted to.
“But at the same time, there’s a very deep sense that love is something that we do, and it is the product of our agency, both with respect to fostering a loving relationship, but also seeing and attending to another person, which is something that we do and not just something that happens to us. In many ways, the song is about that.”
“I Feel Love” — Donna Summer (1977)
George Aumoithe
Assistant Professor of History and of African and African American Studies
Aumoithe, who teaches a College course titled “A Black History of Electronic Dance Music,” recommended this highly danceable, feel-good song from the queen of disco.
“The song was one of the first to mobilize a Moog synthesizer to create a futuristic sound that marked a high-water mark of disco and presaged a wave of synth-pop that remains with us today,” said Aumoithe, who also makes music under the name Efemèr.
“The resulting production is rapturous. Typically, love songs are written as earnest ballads, frequently using gendered language, but Summer’s ‘I Feel Love’ instead turns the song title into a sonic mantra that feels like a never-ending crescendo with universal appeal. One might even call it a ‘vibe.’”
“I Will Always Love You” — Whitney Houston (1992)
Katelyn Hearfield
Postdoctoral Fellow and Lecturer, Theater, Dance & Media
Hearfield, whose research focus includes popular music, pop stars, gender, labor, and trauma, noted the song was originally written by Dolly Parton as a goodbye to country legend Porter Wagoner, her mentor and business partner.
Parton, who was leaving Wagoner’s TV show to strike out on her own, never intended “I Will Always Love You” as a romantic song. But Whitney Houston turned it into one.
“[Houston’s] vocal delivery and the arrangement are just so lush, her voice is so powerful, it feels so romantic,” said Hearfield, who is teaching a College course on “Gender, Race, and Violence in Country Music” this semester. “The a cappella introduction lends to the feelings of ‘authenticity’ and raw emotion, with the voice on its own, completely exposed and vulnerable.
“It’s not passive. It’s not about love as a vague concept. It’s about a very specific moment: having to say goodbye and knowing that it is what’s best for you.
“The key change adds to the weight of it. This chorus is only one sentence: ‘I will always love you’ over and over, so that key change comes at the perfect time in the song where it is starting to get repetitive, and it makes it feel new again.”
“I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)” — Aretha Franklin and George Michael (1986)
Andrew Clark
Director of Choral Activities and Senior Lecturer on Music
Clark, who conducts many of Harvard’s choruses, loves this duet in part because it features an unlikely pairing: the queen of soul with one-half of the English pop duo Wham!
“There’s this short and repetitive electric bass hook, and it has this feeling of persistence and inevitability that nothing can stop you from finding your love,” Clark said. “There’s something about the song that taps into when you’re first falling in love with someone — that serotonin and dopamine overload.
“There’s this short and repetitive electric bass hook, and it has this feeling of persistence and inevitability that nothing can stop you from finding your love.”
“It has this ’80s, almost naive optimism that’s sort of euphoric. As they’re singing this duet, they’re often in unison as well as being in harmony. The song weaves in and out of unity but allows each of their two voices and ideas to shine.”
“Boots of Spanish Leather” — Bob Dylan (1964)
Richard Thomas
George Martin Lane Professor of the Classics
For Thomas, author of “Why Bob Dylan Matters” (2017), there’s no love song quite as poignant as “Boots of Spanish Leather,” which draws inspiration from the English folk ballad tradition.
“A love song of the sort that one does on Valentine’s Day is more of a declaration, like ‘roses are red’ and so on,” said Thomas, who taught his course “Bob Dylan: The Classic” last semester. “But a real love song is one in which there’s doubt that the love is reciprocated, that we never really know the mind of another person. I love this song because it contains the doubt, though the ultimate possibility that she will come back, and all will be well.
“[Dylan] captures what it is to be human, and he captures it in ways that puts it into words which we can’t come up with because we don’t have his poetic and songwriting genius. The songs speak to us whatever they’re about — political, love, and so on.
“For me, nobody sings Dylan like Dylan, and he sung this song in his 70s and now in his 80s. It is a song that works at any age or any time.”
“You Are the Sunshine of My Life” — Stevie Wonder (1972)
David Deming
Danhoff Dean of Harvard College, Isabelle and Scott Black Professor of Public Policy, William Henry Bloomberg Professor of Economics
“Stevie Wonder is the unquestioned king of love songs,” said Deming, who added that it was difficult to pick just one song. “I celebrate the man’s entire catalog.”
Deming went with “You Are the Sunshine of My Life” since it was played at his wedding.
“I also love ‘Knocks Me Off My Feet,’ ‘Isn’t She Lovely,’ ‘I Just Called to Say I Love You,’ and ‘My Cherie Amour,’” he said. “Stevie Wonder understood that a great love song is first and foremost a great song, so it needs to have a catchy melody, a great beat, and all that. But his lyrics are really what stand out. They are specific and memorable (‘There’s something ’bout your love … that makes me weak and knocks me off my feet’) while still being universal.”
