But Not For Me - GIRL CRAZY Love Look Away - FLOWER DRUM SONG But You Don't Know Me - Eddy Arnold and Cindy Walker Hey Look No Cryin' - Jule Styne and Susan Birkenhead Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out to Dry - Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn Send in the Clown - A LITTLE NIGHT MUSIC The Gentleman is a Dope - ALLEGRO Any Day Now Day - THE BAKER'S WIFE Not a Day Goes By - MERRILY WE ROLL ALONG The Music That Makes Me Dance - FUNNY GIRL Where Do I Go From Here? - FIORELLO (cut) I Resolve - SHE LOVES ME
There may not be such a thing as the best mutually unrequited love song (or any mutually unrequited love song), but if there were it would be the unforgettable Perfect Strangers from DROOD.
Look at "Love in Vain" by Leo Robin and Jerome Kern, which contains the delicious line: "I thought that I would be in heaven, but I'm only up a tree."
Also Berlin's "Am I Blue?"
Kern's "Why Was I Born?" or "Can't Help Lovin' That Man of Mine"
Sammy Fain and Irving Kahal's "I'll Be Seeing You" isn't about love unrequited necessarily, but it is about loving someone you can't have because of physical separation. It pretty much kills me every time.
Kern and Wodehouse/Hammerstein's "Bill" doesn't specifically say the love is unrequited, but it is almost always performed as if the singer is carrying a torch.
The oft-recorded "You'll Never Know" (Warren and Gordon) is or isn't an unrequited love song depending on how the singer sings it.
And I absolutely ADORE "Fools Fall in Love" by Lieber and Stoller, especially Jennifer Holliday's version from ALLY MCBEAL:
I will happily agree with "Whoever You Are" from PROMISES, PROMISES and "On the Street Where You Live" from MY FAIR LADY, representing two opposite sides of the unrequited coin (the former being desperation at the end of a long line and the latter being excited enthusiasm of just having met and not knowing how the other feels just yet. "She Loves Me" from SHE LOVES ME might also be the perfect, if not too-on-the-nose, version of that song.) "On My Own" from LES MIS is almost the definition of this type of song. I saw a couple of FOLLIES songs mentioned (that show is so painful) but was "The God-Why-Don't-You-Love-Me Blues" one of them?
I'll also throw out a few variations on the Unrequited theme - "Fallin'" from THEY'RE PLAYING OUR SONG (it's more introspective than anything), "The I Love You Song" from 25th ANNUAL PUTNAM COUNTY SPELLING BEE (a child's heartbreaking plea for unexpressed love from her parents), "Finishing the Hat" from SUNDAY IN THE PARK WITH GEORGE (George yearning for the unrequited kind of love no woman can give him compared to his work), and "Leave" from ONCE (our unrequited love is too painful). They all *feel* like the mood these other songs establish, and I'd argue deserve mention.
Words don't deserve that kind of malarkey. They're innocent, neutral, precise, standing for this, describing that, meaning the other, so if you look after them you can build bridges across incomprehension and chaos. But when they get their corners knocked off, they're no good anymore…I don't think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you can nudge the world a little.