![]() So we thought we’d do you a favor and cut through the noise, rounding up the very best love songs of all time, from old school classics in our favorite movies to Beyoncé and Adele radio belters. Flash forward to 2023, and they’re still releasing them every damn day. ![]() We’ve been writing love songs since the Dark Ages. If you’re newly in love or miserably heartbroken, there’s nothing like a good song to release those pent-up feelings (though if it’s the latter, our list of the best breakup songs might be a better antidote for your aching heart).īut the love song genre is, as we all know, an incredibly saturated market. It’s the kind of song that has you missing an ex you haven’t seen in years and scrawling your phone number in a surge of confidence. There is no point in pretending that the No 1 slot in this list is founded on anything other than personal preference, but really, having trudged your way through Silent Night and done your best with the treacly Away in a Manger, whose heart doesn’t lift a little at the opportunity to belt out O Come, All Ye Faithful, with its chorus full of mounting dynamics, its appealingly weird line about not abhorring the virgin’s womb and its showstopper ending? Beware the sherry-emboldened amateur vocalist who takes it on themselves to attempt the elaborate harmonies in the final verse.True love songs resonate in the deepest parts of your body, compelling you to belt falsetto in the shower, dance in the kitchen, and accidentally bust a move out in public. Without wishing to diminish its spiritual message, or the sighing loveliness of its music, perhaps its grimness – poverty, austerity, people moaning about the weather – speaks to our tacit acceptance of the melancholy that lurks behind Christmas’s tinselly facade. In the Bleak Midwinter (1904)Īdapted by Gustav Holst from a poem by Christina Rossetti, this is the all-time classic gloom-laden carol. Hailing from Cornwall, and quite possibly 300 years older than the estimate above, the latter-day iteration of The First Noel is all about the slow build and the spectacular climax: it starts out relatively hushed, concentrating on the humility of the shepherds, but by its conclusion, it is all guns blazing and irresistibly uplifting. ‘The First Noel is all about the slow build and the spectacular climax.’ Photograph: Foodfolio/Alamy Emotionally wrenching, even disturbing, you can see why it has ended up in the file marked “use sparingly”. Eerie folk melody plus lyrics crammed with misery and woe, it’s not about the Nativity, but the Massacre of the Innocents, sung from the despairing point of view of a new mother. ![]() Hark! The Herald Angels Sing is definitely in what you might describe as the Motörhead category. Some carols were clearly intended to create a contemplative space in which we are invited to consider the wonder of the Nativity, others were just designed to be belted out at maximum volume. The most popular latter-day melody, first used in the 19th century, is incredibly beautiful, lending itself to modern interpretations by indie bands and Enya alike. Possibly the oldest carol here, with its roots in eighth- or ninth-century monastic singing, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel is, strictly speaking, an Advent hymn that’s been co-opted for Christmas. ![]() Oh, how lovely and, just out of interest, did you keep the receipt? 11. We Three Kings (1857)Ī winning combination of sombre verses with a big old chorus, and intrigue provided by the arrival in verse four of Balthazar, whose explanation of his gift seems only to make matters worse: “Myrrh is mine, its bitter perfume breathes a life of gathering gloom”. Regularly incorrectly punctuated – “God rest you merry” is a Shakespearean phrase meaning “God grant you happiness” – and these days performed with two verses excised (they just bang on about shepherds, we’re not missing much), God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen is cheery and induces a warm glow, despite the complaints of an 1820s journalist, who called it “doggerel”. The tune, a dependable source of bountiful good cheer, repurposes a 13th-century Easter carol. If anything, the hagiography of Good King Wenceslas dials the story down a bit: in some accounts, Saint Wenceslas was out in the snow, barefoot, every night as an act of penance. The lyrics are a bit showy – their author, George Ratcliffe Woodward, apparently “delighted in archaic poetry”, which rather suggests he was the kind of person who uses the word “methinks” in every day conversation – but no matter: the melismatic “gloria” provides suitable euphoria. This is a secular tune, from a 16th-century book of French dances, repurposed. But banish the spectre of Alan Partridge playing the latter in his car: Gaudete is powerful and faintly ominous. Not really a Christmas service singalong – lyrics in Latin presumably being beyond the tipsier attenders of midnight mass – Gaudete is best-known today in Steeleye Span’s 1973 hit a cappella version.
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