Top 50 Love Songs of All Time

Alpert sang this Burt Bacharach/Hal David song to his wife on the beach in Malibu on a CBS special. The next day, the network was inundated with calls from viewers asking where they could buy the song. One day later, A&M released a single and it became the label’s first No. 1.

The 12th entry on the Hot 100 for this female vocal group from Oakland, Calif., it proved to be their biggest hit, with four weeks in the runner-up spot. The song was recorded for the soundtrack to Set It Off, starring Queen Latifah and Jada Pinkett.

The video for this song was too steamy for MTV, which refused to air it. Within hours of the network’s decision, Warner/Reprise Video announced that “Justify My Love” would be the first commercially released video single. ABC’s “Nightline” then aired the entire video, uncensored.

Jackson’s first single for Virgin was based on a sample from a James Brown No. 1 R&B hit from 1974, “Papa Don’t Take No Mess.” On first listen, Jackson wasn’t thrilled with Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis’ track; the producers asked her to take it with her on her two-week Christmas vacation and when she returned she told them it was “the bomb.”

Queens, N.Y. native Jennifer Rush was signed to CBS in Germany and found international success with her fourth single, written about her boyfriend Steven. The song kept failing in America, with low-charting versions by Rush herself and Air Supply and a slightly better showing for Laura Branigan. Finally it was a No. 1 smash for Dion, who told Billboard, “If you want to open up and sing strong, you could not have a better song than ‘Power of Love.'”

Welsh singer Donna Lewis just couldn’t eject Los Del Rio’s “Macarena (Bayside Boys Mix)” from pole position, so her only single to reach the top 40 of the Hot 100 had to settle for nine weeks at No. 2. She fared better on the Radio Songs chart, where the song was No. 1 for 12 weeks.

Dionne Warwick told the producers of the Gene Wilder film “The Woman in Red” they should ask Wonder to compose the soundtrack. That’s how the film became an Oscar winner; this song, written for the movie, claimed the Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Michael Masser and Linda Creed wrote this song for the film The Greatest, a Muhammad Ali biopic. George Benson’s soundtrack single peaked at No. 24 in 1977. Later, when Houston auditioned for Clive Davis, she performed the song, and then it became the B-side of her first Arista single, “You Give Good Love.” Months later, radio airplay forced it out as the fifth single from Houston’s debut album.

Asked to contribute a song to the Back to the Future soundtrack, Lewis said he had the perfect tune: “In the Nick of Time.” Negotiations went on so long, Lewis gave the song to another film, Brewster’s Millions. The “Future” folks were upset but Lewis said he had a second perfect song, “Back in Time.” For another scene, Lewis came up with “The Power of Love,” which became the movie’s breakout hit.

Carey and producer Dave Hall did not have the title “Dreamlover” when they started writing the song. “Usually…[I] do an untitled song,” says Hall. “We’ll grab the hook and use that as a title.” Their collaboration gave Carey her then-longest-reigning No. 1 hit.

Other labels were heavily into disco in 1976 but not Motown. So it was an anomaly for Ross to record this Pam Sawyer/Marilyn McLeod tune. Ross had no problem with the slow, seductive first half but started laughing when the beats-per-minute increased, protesting she couldn’t sing that part. Producer Hal Davis created a club atmosphere in the studio and Ross got into it, resulting in another No. 1 hit for the former Supreme.

Elvis Presley’s version peaked at No. 2 in 1962. Three decades later, UB40 was asked to remake the song for the soundtrack to Honeymoon in Vegas. The producers passed over their version in favor of one by Bono of U2. The UB40 recording might have gone unreleased, but the music supervisor of another film, Sliver, rescued the track from the Virgin vaults.

Dan Seals (of England Dan and John Ford Coley) and his brother Jim Seals (of Seals & Crofts) formed their own publishing company, Dawnbreaker Music, in the ’70s. When songwriter Parker McGee got his big break by signing with Dawnbreaker, both duos recorded his material, including “I’d Really Love to See You Tonight, which spent two weeks at No. 2 on the Hot 100 in 1976.

After producer Walter Afanasieff delivered the new Savage Garden album to Columbia, he was given a message to take back to the band: “It’s an artistic masterpiece. But we want another ‘Truly Madly Deeply.'” (the duo’s first No. 1). A furious Darren Hayes went away for 10 minutes with bandmate Daniel Jones and came back with a completed song, “I Knew I Loved You” (the duo’s second No. 1).

There wasn’t unanimous agreement among the members of Foreigner that this song would be a great single for the group. Lou Gramm thought it might do irreparable damage to their rock image and Rick Willis thought it was “fluffy.” Mick Jones told Billboard the track was released “because it was coming out at Christmas and it had the right kind of mood.”

Newly signed to Capitol, Turner’s first single for the EMI-owned label was a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together,” which peaked at a disappointing No. 26 on the Hot 100. The follow-up was an original, though U.K. pop quartet Bucks Fizz recorded it first. Their version went unreleased and Turner had her first No. 1 in the U.S.

John Lennon and Paul McCartney wrote “She Loves You” on a tour bus in Yorkshire, England. It was producer George Martin’s idea for them to start with the chorus of “She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah” instead of the first verse.

After 10 No. 1 hits written and produced by Holland-Dozier-Holland, Diana Ross & the Supremes went into the studio with a new set of Motown collaborators, which resulted in the trio’s 11th chart-topper on the Hot 100. “Love Child” was just one of Motown’s more socially conscious songs that were released starting in 1968, including the Temptations’ “Cloud Nine” and Edwin Starr’s “War.”

Robin Gibb was considered the “chart freak” in the family but Andy was an avid chart watcher too, and he kept track of his second single’s progress up the Hot 100. “It slowed down…we were all a little scared,” he once recalled. “It lost…its jump in sales activity. And then…it just picked up and nothing stopped it.”

David Cassidy and his stepmother Shirley Jones were the only cast members of the TV series who appeared on the group’s recordings, and Jones says, “I did very little…I literally was the backing vocals for David. I never thought I’d have a gold record…it hangs on my wall and I’m very proud of it.”

After struggling for 15 years, the group scored a No. 1 hit in 1975 with “Fire,” from their first album for Mercury. The follow-up LP,  Honey, yielded a single, “Sweet Sticky Thing,” that stalled at No. 33. It was the second single, “Love Rollercoaster,” that returned the group to pole position.

George Merrill and Shannon Rubicam wrote “How Will I Know” for Houston. Asked to submit another song, they sent “Waiting for a Star to Fall,” and when the answer was no, they recorded it themselves as Boy Meets Girl. Encouraged to try again, it only took them two days to write “I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me).” This time, Clive Davis said yes.

Four months after he was No. 1 on the Hot 100 with “Laughter in the Rain,” Neil Sedaka was back on top, as a songwriter, thanks to Captain and Tennille’s cover of a song A&M’s Kip Cohen heard on the Sedaka’s Back album.

A hitless Vinton was about to be dropped by Epic, when he found this song in a reject pile and asked to be given one more chance. He recorded it as an R&B tune. “It was the worst sounding thing you ever heard in your life,” he admits. The label agreed to a second session with a new arrangement, added strings and a vocal choir and the result was a No. 1 on the Hot 100.

The first single from Beyoncé’s first post-Destiny’s Child album (Dangerously in Love) became the first No. 1 of her solo career. “I asked Jay to get on the song the night before I had to turn my album in,” Beyoncé told Billboard. “Thank God he did. It still never gets old, no matter how many times I sing it.”

The combination of Eminem rapping and Rihanna singing about an abusive relationship, something both artists had personally experienced, though from different perspectives, was powerful enough to send the song to No. 1 on the Hot 100 for seven weeks in the summer of 2010. At 12x platinum, it is the best-selling song by either artist.

Lulu hated the songs the producers of the film To Sir With Love were considering for the soundtrack. She asked her friend Mark London to write a title song she could sing. He composed the music in five minutes and the next day Don Black wrote the lyrics. “I was over the moon,” says Lulu.

Right after she was signed to Columbia, Carey wrote her debut single with Ben Margulies. She described the composition as being not so much a love song as a celebration of her life at the time.

Originally recorded as a Christmas song in Sweden in 1987, this track was revised by Per Gessle when he was asked to update it for the Pretty Woman soundtrack. “I heard the director really loved the song,” says Gessle. “I also heard he re-edited the movie to get it in there.”

Her first album was being mastered when Carey played a demo of this song for label president Don Ienner aboard a plane. Carey was told the song was a “career-maker” and despite her protests, the presses were stopped and the song was added to her debut release.

Ed Sheeran wrote “Love Yourself” for himself, intending it for his album Divide.  But then he gave it to Justin Bieber, who did some additional writing on the song, which spent two weeks atop the Hot 100 in early 2016 and went on to become Billboard’s No. 1 song of the year.

Barry and Robin Gibb wrote the song for Streisand but the former told Billboard he gives the artist most of the credit. “At least 80 per cent of the success of the record belongs to her.”

Although Scottish-born Lewis Capaldi first charted in his native U.K. in 2017, he was an unknown in the U.S. when his single “Someone You Loved” was released. The piano ballad turned out to be a sleeper hit, working its way to No. 1 in its 24th week on the Hot 100. The song, which Capaldi wrote about his late grandmother, reigned for three non-consecutive weeks in November 2019.

Five years after he co-wrote Peggy March’s No. 1 hit “I Will Follow Him,” Mauriat was back on top of the Hot 100 with an instrumental cover of “L’Amor Est Bleu,” Luxembourg’s entry in the 1967 Eurovision Song Contest. Vicki Leandros performed the song, which placed fourth in the annual songfest.

Phil Spector was inspired to write the song by a photograph of his father’s tombstone at Beth David Cemetery in New York. The inscription read: “To Know Him Was to Love Him.”

Freddie Mercury wrote the song while languishing in his bath at the Munich Hilton. He leapt from the tub and ran to his guitar and piano to lay down the melody. His label was reluctant to release the song in the U.S. but radio stations played the imported U.K. single anyway, forcing an American release.

After viewing the film Up Close and Personal, Diane Warren met with director Jon Avnet to talk about her vision of the song she was to compose for his movie. The next morning in her office, she recalls, “The chorus lyrically and musically wrote itself.”

McCartney wrote “My Love” about one of the members of his post-Beatles band, Wings. The inspiration for the sentimental ballad was Scarsdale, N.Y.-born Linda Louise Eastman, a professional photographer before she married McCartney on March 12, 1969.

Ryan Tedder and Jesse McCartney wrote the song, inspired by the latter’s long-distance romance with his girlfriend. McCartney wanted the song for himself but his label was unenthusiastic so it went to the winner of the third season of The X Factor in the U.K.

Back in 1958, Don Gibson wrote two songs one hot afternoon in Knoxville, Tenn. – “Oh Lonesome Me” and “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” Four years later, Charles only needed to hear the first two lines of the latter before deciding to record it for his album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music.

When the Stax label folded, the three Hutchinson sisters had to find a new home. They were signed to a production company run by Maurice White of Earth, Wind & Fire. With group member Al McKay, White wrote this song specifically for them and the lead voice of Wanda Hutchinson.

Joan Jett tried to convince her band ’70s band, The Runaways, to record a cover of the Arrows’ “I Love Rock n’ Roll,” but they weren’t into it. She recorded a version for the B-side of a Dutch single (a remake of Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me”), but it was her version with backing band the Blackhearts that ruled the Hot 100 for seven weeks in 1982.

Songwriter Warren Allen Brooks says his No. 1 hit was a “spiritual song,” even if people think he was writing about love between a man and a woman. “It’s really about me and God having a personal relationship.”

Mario didn’t realize this song was going to be so huge. “I didn’t know it would touch so many people,” he says. “But it was an emotional song and those records last forever.”

Whitney Houston’s signature song — a No. 1 smash from The Bodyguard — was originally a No. 1 hit for the woman who composed the tune, Dolly Parton. Her version topped the Hot Country Songs chart in 1974 and again in 1982.

1976 was a very good year for love songs achieving pole position on the Hot 100. First there was “Love Rollercoaster” by the Ohio Players, followed by Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover,” “Love Machine” by the Miracles, “Let Your Love Flow” by the Bellamy Brothers, “Love Hangover” by Diana Ross and the longest-running “love” No. 1 of the year, Wings’ “Silly Love Songs.”

What could be more romantic than finding love in a “hopeless place”? Rihanna scored the biggest hit of her career (and the top ‘love’ song of the 21st century) with only her fourth Hot 100 entry to feature “love” in the title, following “If It’s Lovin’ That You Want” (2005), “Hate That I Love You” (2007) and her featured role on Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie” (2010).

Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb hadn’t seen the script for the movie that became Saturday Night Fever when they wrote “How Deep Is Your Love” for the soundtrack. They weren’t even certain that there was a love scene in the film. They intended the song for Yvonne Elliman, but their manager Robert Stigwood insisted they record it themselves.

When the members of Boyz II Men first heard Babyface’s composition “I’ll Make Love to You,” they were concerned about recording a song that was too similar to their previous hit, “End of the Road.” Nathan Morris explains, “The record company talked us into doing it and thank God it worked.”

Producer Jon Peters and director Franco Zeffirelli asked Lionel Richie to compose an instrumental along the lines of the theme from Love Story for the movie Endless Love starring Brooke Shields. When Zeffirelli changed his mind and asked Richie if he would add lyrics, the Motown star agreed to write some. Then Zeffirelli made one more request – to add a female singer, someone like Diana Ross.