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Valentine's Day is here and love is all around us. At this most romantic time of the year, we can't help but wonder... what is the greatest Broadway love song ever? BroadwayWorld continues our great tradition of finding that consensus- and this year we have more answers than ever! We've gathered responses from over 1500 performers, composers, industry professionals, and entertainment personalities from all over the world.
This year's list is presented by The Notebook, now in previews on Broadway. Based on the best selling novel that inspired the iconic film, this new musical follows Allie and Noah, both from different worlds, as they share a lifetime of love despite the forces that threaten to pull them apart, in a deeply moving portrait of the enduring power of love.
Performer
Be More Chill | Dear Evan Hansen
"Inside Your Heart" from Bat Boy. The great thing about this song is that it's like the metaphor of I will always live inside your heart, but she's actually talking about letting the Bat Boy drink her blood so she will always live inside of his heart literally! I love that show.
Performer
Les Miserables | The Color Purple
My favorite Broadway love song is "Some Enchanted Evening" from South Pacific because it is just beautiful. It's an incredible song. That song of yearning and of really putting out your whole life in front of someone else...The think I love about it the most is that everyone dreams about that moment. That moment of meeting someone and falling in love immediately.
Performer
Moulin! Rouge! | Guys and Dolls | The Little Mermaid | Jersey Boys
For me "I Got Lost in His Arms" from ANNIE GET YOUR GUN does it everytime. She (Annie) resists falling for this guy so hard. I just love the idea of how defenseless she becomes when he wraps his arms around her. Once you fall there is nothing you can do. It makes humans both powerless and powerful!
Director
The Music Man | Kiss Me Kate | Hello Dolly! | She Loves Me | On the Twentieth Century | After Midnight
“Will He Like Me?" from She Loves Me. The lyrics “will he like me? ...and “he’s just got to”“There’s more to me than I may always show” those lyrics kill me and that’s why I love it.
Performer
Almost Famous | Waitress | Jersey Boys | On a Clear Day You Can See Forever
"If I loved You" from Carousel is probably the greatest love song ever written because it deftly walks the line between flirtation and confession of feelings that only a Rogers and Hammerstein song can really do but if I'm picking the kareoke song... it's "On the Wings of Love" every time. That bridge?! Come ON!
Creative
Aladdin | Sister Act | Newsies | Little Shop of Horrors | The Little Mermaid
"Do You Love Me" from Fiddler On The Roof. But I've been married a long time. If you asked me 40 years ago, I would have said "On The Street Where You Live."
Performer
Be More Chill | Godspell | Tick Tick...Boom!
"Love Is My Legs" from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels written by David Yazbeck sung by the great Norbert Leo Butz and the great Sherie Rene Scott. I love that song so much. It is a belty, belty song. It is so full of heart but also hilarious. I wish someone would sing that to me on Valentine's Day.
Performer
Flying Over Sunset | On the Town | White Christmas | Gypsy | A Chorus Line | Never Gonna Dance | Oklahoma
A Couple of my favorites are My Heart is So Full of You, Some Other Time, The Way You Look Tonight, and every single glorious love song from West Side Story. These are songs that completely haunt me spiritually in the best way possible
Performer
It Shoulda Been You | Mothers and Sons | Master Class | Gypsy
"My White Knight" from The Music Man. I love the lyric "And I would like him to be more interested in me than he is in himself." It touches me because it's so generous.
Creative
Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812
When my wife Eliza and I were selecting wedding music, we must have rejected hundreds of songs, for being too dishonest and incomplete, too clichéd and schmaltzy; we wanted something that actually celebrated all the dirt and joy and annoyance and sublimeness of a longterm relationship. Sondheim's "Being Alive" does that in a way I don't think has ever been matched...it's my favorite song of his, and maybe my favorite song of all time. At the wedding Phillipa Soo sang it, squalling us and the whole church until we were one great sobbing emotional puddle.
Performer
Harmony | It Shoulda Been You | The Phantom of the Opera | Les Miserables | Master Class | Love Never Dies | The Little Mermaid
“What about Love” from The Color Purple. I’ll never forget the first time I saw this song onstage in the original musical and I sobbed my eyes out! Even just hearing it now I cry again!
Performer
You Can't Take It With You | Living on Love
It probably sounds a bit cynical, but "Being Alive" is my favorite. Its the truth of what it can mean to be in a relationship and to love someone.
Performer
The Shark Is Broken | Violet | Anything Goes | Jersey Boys | Almost Famous | Songs for a New World |
I'm a big fan of the classic musical love songs like "Easy to Love" from Anything Goes, but one that moved me the first time I heard it Off-Broadway and has stuck with me since is "Wait for Me" from Hadestown. It's just stunning and tragic and beautiful.
Performer
Maestro | To Kill a Mockingbird | Significant Other | Spring Awakening | Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
It's "Move On" from Sunday in the Park with George. That song every time gives me goosebumps. It's beautiful and sad like life is.
Creative
Be More Chill | Broadway Bounty Hunter | Bloodsong of Love
"I Believe in You" from How to Succeed. It's a love song to yourseld and I think it's important to love yourself.
Performer
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof | A View From The Bridge
"I've Grown Accustomed To Her Face" from My Fair Lady.
Performer
Paradise Square | Slave Play | The Color Purple | Holler If Ya Hear Me | Godspell
"Elaborate Lives" from Aida. Even though they're dying in a tomb! It's such a beautiful song.
Performer
Finding Neverland | Mary Poppins | Fiddler on the Roof
"I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face" from My Fair Lady. It's so wonderful to see how a stubborn angry man can learn to be moved, tender and humbled in the face of Love. Even though the word love is not mentioned once, we as the audience all know how much he loves this wild cat he taught to be a Lady! And in my mind he never wants to live without her from that day.
Performer
Mary Poppins | The Secret Garden | The Music Man | The Sound of Music | Nine | Showboat | The Phantom of the Opera
"All The Things You Are" from VERY WARM FOR MAY, by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. For me, it's like the heavens are opening up when I hear that song. And it reminds me of how I feel about Danny.
Performer
Hedwig and the Angry Inch | The Secret Garden | Six Degrees of Separation
"Torn Between Two Lovers" by Mary MacGregor
Performer
Spamalot | Beetlejuice | Sondheim on Sondheim | Legally Blonde | The Great American Trailer Park Musical | Hairspray | Leslie Kritzer is Patti LuPone at Les Mouches
My favorite Broadway Love Song is "One Hand, One Heart" from my favorite Broadway musical, WEST SIDE STORY. I recently sang it at my aunt's wedding - it's a beautiful, simple, love song.
Performer
Death Becomes Her | Company | Hello | Dolly! | Disaster | Sister Act
My favorite Broadway love song has evolved over the years and my current choice is a reflection of that. I grew up in the country and when I think of home, I think of the wild lady slippers, lily-of-the-valley, forsythia and lilacs. Edelweiss is used as a love song and subliminal goodbye to a beloved homeland that will forever be in your heart.
Director
New York | New York | Crazy for You | Prince of Broadway | Bullets Over Broadway: The Musical | Big Fish | Young Frankenstein | The Producers
My favorite Broadway love song is "Nice Work If You Can Get It," and it's because of those lyrics. It is my favorite love song because "nice work if you can get it."
Performer
Falsettos | Anastasia | An American in Paris
It's always been "If I Loved You" from Carousel. I learned it in college and it's always stuck with me. The minute I sing it, it just sweeps me away.
Performer
A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder
My favorite Broadway love song is "I Don't Need Anything But You" from Annie, between Annie and Daddy Warbucks. It's the sweetest song and it's not a traditional love song, it's not romantic love. It's about a father figure, a new dad, and a little girl, and it's just so touching.
Performer
The Phantom of the Opera
I really like "Tonight" in West Side Story. You know, the enegery when you first meet someone and the excitedness that you feel.
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