Derrick's Ultimate Valentine's Day Playlist
Listen to my entire playlist in it's full and glorius form vis-a-vis my spotify Valentine's Day Playlist and subcribe to me for future Vundablog playlists Derrick Mustelier aka bioponic.
Current Lover (joyful):
-Across the Universe Soundtrack - All My Loving
The intro of this song in the movie is a ridiculously adorable scene--I love the way the girl says “Pull the other one” when Jude sings “and remember I’ll always be true.” His Limey accent really shines through in this song too, I love it.
-The Beach Boys - God Only Knows
This might just be the ultimate song for a significant other. There is no better musical description of that all-consuming storybook love that every girl (and many guys, even if they don’t want to admit it) dreams about.
-Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life
This might just be the cutest song ever written. We’ve all met someone who makes us feel brand new. This song articulates that feeling perfectly.
-Bright Eyes - Oh, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth In Place
Again, we’ve all met someone like this. Someone who keeps us grounded and holds us up. Someone who is our foundation.
-Cat Power - Sea of Love
I first heard this song in Juno and it was just irresistible. I’m not really that into Cat Power but this is a beautiful cover of surprisingly old song (surprising to me anyway). For any fans of Tom Waits, he does a phenomenal cover of this song as well--totally different from this one.
-Dashboard Confessional - Hands Down
OK, it’s cheesy as all hell but you can’t deny this: this is absolutely what the best date of your life sounds like in your head.
-Lucero - Slow Dancing
This is either the happiest sad song ever or the saddest happy song ever.
-Stone Temple Pilots - Still Remains
Some might call this song a tad creepy. I think that’s kind of a narrow-minded view. It’s a beautifully prosaic song about (truly) all-consuming love in an extremely intimate context. It’s a little intense but I fell in love with it when I was a teenager in love for the first time and never really looked back from there.
-Thrice - The Weight
This is a little bit more of an adult perspective, focusing on commitment and dedication more so than passion and emotion--although it has plenty of both to spare.
-Weezer - Susanne
Any guy would kill for a girl like Susanne. Someone to bake you brownies and give you the coat off her back. Someone to put Izzy, Slash, and Axl Rose on hold when you call. All that you need in the world.
-Weezer - Holiday
Another old-timey 6/8 time signature love song from the W. This one describes a beautiful Utopian vacation with the girl of your dreams to “a strange and distant land where they speak no word of truth but we don’t understand anyway.”
-Yellowcard - October Nights
If “God Only Knows” is the ultimate song for a significant other then this is its pop punk equivalent. I never make a mix tape for a girl I like without this song...and usually I close with it. A perfect articulation of the romanticism of one of the favorite past times of lovers the world over: watching their lover sleep. Awww.
Current Lover (not quite so joyful):
-John Mayer - Slow Dancing In a Burning Room
Leave it to John Mayer to write a love song about being in an apparently doomed relationship with a woman he appears to openly loathe
-Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories - Stay
I’ve always kinda dug this song but I never really started appreciating it until I FINALLY discovered the movie Reality Bites about 17 years too late. It’s the perfect bookend for that movie. A heartbreaker about a serious communication breakdown between two disgruntled lovers who always seem to find their way back to one another.
-Lucero - What Else Would You Have Me Be?
I really, really love this song and relate to it immensely. The title says it all: a defiant and earnest declaration of “this is who I am, love it or leave it.”
Potential Lover:
-Bright Eyes - Make a Plan to Love Me
Equal parts sarcastic and sheepish, Oberst implores...someone...to try and see if they can fit falling in love with him into their busy schedule. Adorable.
-Foo Fighters - Everlong
One of the greatest songs ever written if anyone’s asking me--which, of course, no one is or ever does.
-The Get Up Kids - Valentine
Couldn’t in good conscience have a list of songs for Valentine’s Day without putting this one on it. “Would you be my valentine if I’m a world away?”
-Incubus - Southern Girl/Incubus - Stellar
I put these together because I have pretty much the same thing to say about both which is that Incubus really knows how to tell a girl she’s special...
“You’re an exception to the rule, you’re a bonafide rarity, you’re all I ever wanted, Southern Girl could you want me?”
“How do you do it--make me feel like I do?”
-Jimmy Eat World - Just Watch the Fireworks
There are too many great lines to count in this seven-minute masterpiece including one of the best opening lines of a song ever: “Here you can be anything and I think that scares you.”
-Jimmy Eat World - For Me This Is Heaven
This is the ultimate and quintessential love song. “Can you still feel the butterflies?”
-Jimmy Eat World - Clarity
The album this song takes its name from is overflowing with exhilarating love songs. This is your classic “why are you waiting around for the man of your dreams when I’m right here in front of you” song.
-Jimmy Eat World - 23
Some songs just SOUND like falling in love. This is one of the best.
-Weezer - Hold Me
I love the description in the first verse of this woman who is such an intimidating presence in her sheer wonderfulness that she is described as “taller than a mountain” and “deeper than the sea.” I’ve known my fair share of women who fit that description (not literally, figuratively).
-Weezer - El Scorcho
This isn’t just for the guys who love half-Japanese girls. It’s also for guys who love cello players. One of the favorite lines of hopeless romantics everywhere: “I think I’d be good for you and you’d be good for me.”
-Weezer - Falling For You
“I’m shaking at your touch. I like you way too much. My baby I’m afraid I’m falling for you.” What else can be said?
-Wilco - I’m the Man Who Loves You/Descendents - I’m the One
We’ve all seen the girl we’re in love with dating the guy who doesn’t deserve her (at least not as much as WE do). These songs are everything we’ve always wanted to say to those girls. The Descendents one probably belongs in the next section but it didn’t seem right to have them apart.
Unrequited Lover:
-Alkaline Trio - Bleeder
Another one of the greatest first lines of a song ever: “You came to me like a dream...the kind that always leaves...”
-Alkaline Trio - Enjoy Your Day
“So Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope the sun’s out in New York. I hope he bought you roses.” Nuff said.
-Ben Folds - Gone
An open letter to a years-gone lover that the writer is just now getting over but still wants to stay in touch with. He “hope[s] you’ll find some time to drop a note but if you won’t then you won’t and [he] will consider you gone.”
-Catch 22 - Kristina She Don’t Know I Exist
The story of the girl who never noticed you.
-Darwin’s Waiting Room - All I Have Is Me
This song meant a lot to me in high school. Classic story of the guy who can’t stop thinking about a girl and everything and everyone reminds him of her.
-The Ergs! - Running, Jumping, Standing Still
Overwhelmingly nerdy and self-deprecating. No one wants to admit they relate to this stuff but they do. Trust me.
-Incubus - I Miss You
“To know that you feel the same as I do is a three-fold Utopian dream.” Brandon Boyd gets it.
-The Lawrence Arms - Your Gravest Words
This would probably be on my list of the 100 greatest songs of all time. It’s like standing underneath a waterfall. Lyrically captivating and musically mesmerizing.
-Limp Bizkit - Hold On/Lit - Perfect One
Look, I know, ok? I know. But hear me out. I think both these bands are just as horrible as the next guy (although I was big into Limp Bizkit when I was 15 so they still have some nostalgic value). These songs are exceptions. In the case of the Limp Bizkit song, this sounds NOTHING like any of their songs. The driving force behind the song is Scott Weiland. So it hardly qualifies as a Limp Bizkit song anyway. The Lit song is just...an anomally. It’s not the best song in the world but it’s surprisingly well-written and heartbreakingly earnest.
-Lucero - I Don’t Wanna Be the One
“I don’t wanna be the one who misses you at night.” Who can’t feel that?
-Nine Inch Nails - Something I Can Never Have
Trent Reznor knows a thing or two about loneliness methinks.
-A Perfect Circle - 3 Libras
You’d be hard pressed to describe unrequited love as poetically as Maynard James Keenan. This song is like setting sail at sunset--wistful, whimsical, and majestic.
-The Plastic Mastery - Before the Fall
Just about the best lo-fi indie love song you’ll find. Kind of a lo-fi “October Nights” in a way.
-Slipknot - Vermillion (Pt. 2)
I know it’s a little scary that this song is by Slipknot but let me assuage your fears by telling you that this is a heart-wrenching acoustic ballad. Give it a chance. You won’t be disappointed.
-Weezer - Only In Dreams
This is the best unrequited love song ever written.
Non-Specific:
-Aloe Blacc - You Make Me Smile
Aloe Blacc is the best thing going on in R&B right now. This song makes ME smile.
-The Ataris - The Boys of Summer
Bit of a curveball here going with the pop punk cover over the original but god damn I love this cover. I love the “Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac.”
-The Beatles - Something
I agree with Frank Sinatra. This is THE single greatest love song ever written. Hands down.
-Bright Eyes - A Perfect Sonnet
Valentine’s Day bitterness at its finest. But at least it comes around at the end.
-Bruce Springsteen - She’s the One
Terrific little-known track from one of the best albums ever: “Born to Run”
-The Carpenters - (They Long to Be) Close to You
Homer and Marge Simpson taught an entire generation what true love REALLY looks like and this was “their song.”
-Elliott Smith - Between the Bars
No one could do crippling sadness like Elliott Smith. This is him at his best. This song was also brilliantly utilized in Good Will Hunting (along with several other Elliott Smith songs including “Miss Misery”, one of the best closing songs in a movie EVER)
-Elliott Smith - Say Yes
The story of the girl who’s still around the morning after.
-Incubus - Love Hurts
“Love hurts but sometimes it’s a good hurt and it feels like I’m alive.” Amen.
-Incubus - Wish You Were Here
It’s nice every now and then to have a happy, satisfying moment totally ruined by wishing someone else were there with you. Wait. I mean...totally made better. Well...it kinda depends on who you’re thinking of, I guess.
-Jimmy Eat World - Table For Glasses
I want my future wife to walk down the aisle to this song.
-Jimmy Eat World - Crush
This song reminds me a lot of “Hands Down” just in terms of feel. Both have such an exhilarating feel. This song is way better though. Especially the lyrics: “Take in restraint like a breath. My lungs are so numb from holding back.”
-Jimmy Eat World - Polaris
Sometimes it’s nice to have the reassurance that no matter how bleak things seem sometimes, love will find its way to you.
-Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
“What a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all ‘round the sun.”
-Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile/Green Day - Extraordinary Girl
Both songs about “an extraordinary girl in an ordinary world”, Trent Reznor just does it a lot better. “The Fragile” is one of a handful of songs I consider absolutely sacred.
-No Doubt - Running
Imagine this song playing over the ending of Scott Pilgrim v. the World. It would kick in right as he takes her hand to walk through the door. And the lyrics are PERFECT.
-Sunny Day Real Estate - Song About an Angel
“So I say still away, sleep close my eyes. Image of your face traced in white sand. Underneath, undefined, I lay down. Arms outstretched, I embrace the fall.”
-Weezer - No Other One
“Nobody knows me like her. Nobody knows her like me.” Sigh.
-Weezer - Why Bother
What better way to close out the playlist than the most defeatist song on the whole thing. We’ve all asked ourselves this question at one time or another. Rivers Cuomo is just more open about it.
This might just be the ultimate song for a significant other. There is no better musical description of that all-consuming storybook love that every girl (and many guys, even if they don’t want to admit it) dreams about.
-Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life
This might just be the cutest song ever written. We’ve all met someone who makes us feel brand new. This song articulates that feeling perfectly.
-Bright Eyes - Oh, You Are the Roots That Sleep Beneath My Feet and Hold the Earth In Place
Again, we’ve all met someone like this. Someone who keeps us grounded and holds us up. Someone who is our foundation.
-Cat Power - Sea of Love
I first heard this song in Juno and it was just irresistible. I’m not really that into Cat Power but this is a beautiful cover of surprisingly old song (surprising to me anyway). For any fans of Tom Waits, he does a phenomenal cover of this song as well--totally different from this one.
-Dashboard Confessional - Hands Down
OK, it’s cheesy as all hell but you can’t deny this: this is absolutely what the best date of your life sounds like in your head.
-Lucero - Slow Dancing
This is either the happiest sad song ever or the saddest happy song ever.
-Stone Temple Pilots - Still Remains
Some might call this song a tad creepy. I think that’s kind of a narrow-minded view. It’s a beautifully prosaic song about (truly) all-consuming love in an extremely intimate context. It’s a little intense but I fell in love with it when I was a teenager in love for the first time and never really looked back from there.
-Thrice - The Weight
This is a little bit more of an adult perspective, focusing on commitment and dedication more so than passion and emotion--although it has plenty of both to spare.
-Weezer - Susanne
Any guy would kill for a girl like Susanne. Someone to bake you brownies and give you the coat off her back. Someone to put Izzy, Slash, and Axl Rose on hold when you call. All that you need in the world.
-Weezer - Holiday
Another old-timey 6/8 time signature love song from the W. This one describes a beautiful Utopian vacation with the girl of your dreams to “a strange and distant land where they speak no word of truth but we don’t understand anyway.”
-Yellowcard - October Nights
If “God Only Knows” is the ultimate song for a significant other then this is its pop punk equivalent. I never make a mix tape for a girl I like without this song...and usually I close with it. A perfect articulation of the romanticism of one of the favorite past times of lovers the world over: watching their lover sleep. Awww.
Current Lover (not quite so joyful):
-John Mayer - Slow Dancing In a Burning Room
Leave it to John Mayer to write a love song about being in an apparently doomed relationship with a woman he appears to openly loathe
-Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories - Stay
I’ve always kinda dug this song but I never really started appreciating it until I FINALLY discovered the movie Reality Bites about 17 years too late. It’s the perfect bookend for that movie. A heartbreaker about a serious communication breakdown between two disgruntled lovers who always seem to find their way back to one another.
-Lucero - What Else Would You Have Me Be?
I really, really love this song and relate to it immensely. The title says it all: a defiant and earnest declaration of “this is who I am, love it or leave it.”
Potential Lover:
-Bright Eyes - Make a Plan to Love Me
Equal parts sarcastic and sheepish, Oberst implores...someone...to try and see if they can fit falling in love with him into their busy schedule. Adorable.
-Foo Fighters - Everlong
One of the greatest songs ever written if anyone’s asking me--which, of course, no one is or ever does.
-The Get Up Kids - Valentine
Couldn’t in good conscience have a list of songs for Valentine’s Day without putting this one on it. “Would you be my valentine if I’m a world away?”
-Incubus - Southern Girl/Incubus - Stellar
I put these together because I have pretty much the same thing to say about both which is that Incubus really knows how to tell a girl she’s special...
“You’re an exception to the rule, you’re a bonafide rarity, you’re all I ever wanted, Southern Girl could you want me?”
“How do you do it--make me feel like I do?”
-Jimmy Eat World - Just Watch the Fireworks
There are too many great lines to count in this seven-minute masterpiece including one of the best opening lines of a song ever: “Here you can be anything and I think that scares you.”
-Jimmy Eat World - For Me This Is Heaven
This is the ultimate and quintessential love song. “Can you still feel the butterflies?”
-Jimmy Eat World - Clarity
The album this song takes its name from is overflowing with exhilarating love songs. This is your classic “why are you waiting around for the man of your dreams when I’m right here in front of you” song.
-Jimmy Eat World - 23
Some songs just SOUND like falling in love. This is one of the best.
-Weezer - Hold Me
I love the description in the first verse of this woman who is such an intimidating presence in her sheer wonderfulness that she is described as “taller than a mountain” and “deeper than the sea.” I’ve known my fair share of women who fit that description (not literally, figuratively).
-Weezer - El Scorcho
This isn’t just for the guys who love half-Japanese girls. It’s also for guys who love cello players. One of the favorite lines of hopeless romantics everywhere: “I think I’d be good for you and you’d be good for me.”
-Weezer - Falling For You
“I’m shaking at your touch. I like you way too much. My baby I’m afraid I’m falling for you.” What else can be said?
-Wilco - I’m the Man Who Loves You/Descendents - I’m the One
We’ve all seen the girl we’re in love with dating the guy who doesn’t deserve her (at least not as much as WE do). These songs are everything we’ve always wanted to say to those girls. The Descendents one probably belongs in the next section but it didn’t seem right to have them apart.
Unrequited Lover:
-Alkaline Trio - Bleeder
Another one of the greatest first lines of a song ever: “You came to me like a dream...the kind that always leaves...”
-Alkaline Trio - Enjoy Your Day
“So Happy Valentine’s Day. I hope the sun’s out in New York. I hope he bought you roses.” Nuff said.
-Ben Folds - Gone
An open letter to a years-gone lover that the writer is just now getting over but still wants to stay in touch with. He “hope[s] you’ll find some time to drop a note but if you won’t then you won’t and [he] will consider you gone.”
-Catch 22 - Kristina She Don’t Know I Exist
The story of the girl who never noticed you.
-Darwin’s Waiting Room - All I Have Is Me
This song meant a lot to me in high school. Classic story of the guy who can’t stop thinking about a girl and everything and everyone reminds him of her.
-The Ergs! - Running, Jumping, Standing Still
Overwhelmingly nerdy and self-deprecating. No one wants to admit they relate to this stuff but they do. Trust me.
-Incubus - I Miss You
“To know that you feel the same as I do is a three-fold Utopian dream.” Brandon Boyd gets it.
-The Lawrence Arms - Your Gravest Words
This would probably be on my list of the 100 greatest songs of all time. It’s like standing underneath a waterfall. Lyrically captivating and musically mesmerizing.
-Limp Bizkit - Hold On/Lit - Perfect One
Look, I know, ok? I know. But hear me out. I think both these bands are just as horrible as the next guy (although I was big into Limp Bizkit when I was 15 so they still have some nostalgic value). These songs are exceptions. In the case of the Limp Bizkit song, this sounds NOTHING like any of their songs. The driving force behind the song is Scott Weiland. So it hardly qualifies as a Limp Bizkit song anyway. The Lit song is just...an anomally. It’s not the best song in the world but it’s surprisingly well-written and heartbreakingly earnest.
-Lucero - I Don’t Wanna Be the One
“I don’t wanna be the one who misses you at night.” Who can’t feel that?
-Nine Inch Nails - Something I Can Never Have
Trent Reznor knows a thing or two about loneliness methinks.
-A Perfect Circle - 3 Libras
You’d be hard pressed to describe unrequited love as poetically as Maynard James Keenan. This song is like setting sail at sunset--wistful, whimsical, and majestic.
-The Plastic Mastery - Before the Fall
Just about the best lo-fi indie love song you’ll find. Kind of a lo-fi “October Nights” in a way.
-Slipknot - Vermillion (Pt. 2)
I know it’s a little scary that this song is by Slipknot but let me assuage your fears by telling you that this is a heart-wrenching acoustic ballad. Give it a chance. You won’t be disappointed.
-Weezer - Only In Dreams
This is the best unrequited love song ever written.
Non-Specific:
-Aloe Blacc - You Make Me Smile
Aloe Blacc is the best thing going on in R&B right now. This song makes ME smile.
-The Ataris - The Boys of Summer
Bit of a curveball here going with the pop punk cover over the original but god damn I love this cover. I love the “Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac.”
-The Beatles - Something
I agree with Frank Sinatra. This is THE single greatest love song ever written. Hands down.
-Bright Eyes - A Perfect Sonnet
Valentine’s Day bitterness at its finest. But at least it comes around at the end.
-Bruce Springsteen - She’s the One
Terrific little-known track from one of the best albums ever: “Born to Run”
-The Carpenters - (They Long to Be) Close to You
Homer and Marge Simpson taught an entire generation what true love REALLY looks like and this was “their song.”
-Elliott Smith - Between the Bars
No one could do crippling sadness like Elliott Smith. This is him at his best. This song was also brilliantly utilized in Good Will Hunting (along with several other Elliott Smith songs including “Miss Misery”, one of the best closing songs in a movie EVER)
-Elliott Smith - Say Yes
The story of the girl who’s still around the morning after.
-Incubus - Love Hurts
“Love hurts but sometimes it’s a good hurt and it feels like I’m alive.” Amen.
-Incubus - Wish You Were Here
It’s nice every now and then to have a happy, satisfying moment totally ruined by wishing someone else were there with you. Wait. I mean...totally made better. Well...it kinda depends on who you’re thinking of, I guess.
-Jimmy Eat World - Table For Glasses
I want my future wife to walk down the aisle to this song.
-Jimmy Eat World - Crush
This song reminds me a lot of “Hands Down” just in terms of feel. Both have such an exhilarating feel. This song is way better though. Especially the lyrics: “Take in restraint like a breath. My lungs are so numb from holding back.”
-Jimmy Eat World - Polaris
Sometimes it’s nice to have the reassurance that no matter how bleak things seem sometimes, love will find its way to you.
-Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
“What a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all ‘round the sun.”
-Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile/Green Day - Extraordinary Girl
Both songs about “an extraordinary girl in an ordinary world”, Trent Reznor just does it a lot better. “The Fragile” is one of a handful of songs I consider absolutely sacred.
-No Doubt - Running
Imagine this song playing over the ending of Scott Pilgrim v. the World. It would kick in right as he takes her hand to walk through the door. And the lyrics are PERFECT.
-Sunny Day Real Estate - Song About an Angel
“So I say still away, sleep close my eyes. Image of your face traced in white sand. Underneath, undefined, I lay down. Arms outstretched, I embrace the fall.”
-Weezer - No Other One
“Nobody knows me like her. Nobody knows her like me.” Sigh.
-Weezer - Why Bother
What better way to close out the playlist than the most defeatist song on the whole thing. We’ve all asked ourselves this question at one time or another. Rivers Cuomo is just more open about it.
Check out Spotify it makes listening to songs pretty easy for the most part.
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