Three Top-10 Love Songs

Wicked Game - Chris Isaak


I heard a Mile of Music band cover this recently.  What I hope is to put it in a time capsule and have some future person discover it for the first time.  It has the power to stop you in your tracks so that an ocean of feeling can flow through you from earth to the starry heavens (or am I just thinking of an ocean because of the cheesy video? but there is something watery about the blend of lust-drunk but hopeless and melancholy feeling that the song inspired).  But for me it is still too recently associated with a particular time in my life that is just far enough past to seem quaint and childish, and so I react with that simple nostalgia and not with the stunned immediacy any more.  But I'll bet that future person, when they open up the time capsule and hear this for the first time, feels the powerful ocean-feeling.

Kiss From a Rose - Seal


This was an "our song" for a particular relationship that was just new when it initially came out, but I've been surprised how adaptable it has been, staying a favorite and speaking romantically to me, long after that particular rose died and lost all its petals.

Magic Bus - The Who


This one was discovered in High School, during I guess a Who phase when I was feeling profound 17 year old thoughts while lying on my bed listening to the Quadrophenia soundtrack in big puffy headphones.  The polyrhythms in the second half make your insides want to dance in several different directions at once, but it's the words that I think make this song romantic.  I said as much one time when I was radio dj'ing in college, during Finals week of the first semester, when I had signed up for a show outside of my usual time.  Much later that year, I was sitting with a boy two or three years younger than me who I typed term papers for, it was also during Finals I think, just hanging out, and I can't remember why but I think I launched into an explanation of some philosphical concept and so my hanging out voice turned into my lecturing voice, and he jumped, and pointed at me, and said, "That's where I know you from!"  He said, "You were on the radio, and you played the song Magic Bus, and you said, '"Here's the most romantic song on earth, because it's about someone who wants to buy a bus, to go and see his girlfriend.  I don't know, you decide.'"  I could exactly remember giving that introduction, and it was funny because I still believed it, still do now and can't really see why anyone else can't, but I don't think he could, and he thought my introduction was hilarious, which is why it stuck with him.

Is it the most romantic song on earth?  I don't know, you decide :-)