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They say that falling in love is wonderful... and doesn't Broadway know it! 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.

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The View Upstairs
"Love I Hear” from Stephen Sondheim’s A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. "I pine, I blush, I squeak, I squawk, today I woke to week to walk, what's love I hear, I feel, I fear, I know I am, I'm sure, I mean, I hope, I trust, I pray, I must be in!"
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Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends | The Lyons | Guys and Dolls | Proof | An American Daughte
"I've Never Been in Love Before" from Guys and Dolls because I got to sing it! And it just moves me every time I hear it or think about it. And again, one of those moments where I go, did that really happen? Did I get to do that?
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Next to Normal
My favorite Broadway show love song is “When the Sun Goes Down” from In The Heights.
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | Sister Act | School of Rock
I'm gonna take it back, old school - "Something Good" from The Sound of Music. I love a love that is staring at your right in the face for a while before you realize it.
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The Heart of Rock & Roll | Holiday Inn | How to Succeed... |
I would say "Carousel" from Jacques Brel, which was one of the first shows I directed in New York. In French it’s “La Valse a Mille Temps” which means a waltz played in 1000 time (as opposed to being played in three). It’s a gorgeous love song that spins out of control as life gets messier, but it’s still the same love that underpins it right to the end.
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Porgy and Bess | Race | The Wiz | A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum | Dreamgirls
"I Loves You Porgy" from Porgy and Bess and "Look to the Rainbow" from Finians Rainbow.
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Funny Girl | A Soldier's Play | After Midnight
“I Want To Be With You” by Sammy Davis Jr and Paula Wayne from Golden Boy. It’s my favorite because the song emphasizes the reality of losing someone and the pain that comes with it while at the same time using that pain to stress the importance of not taking love for granted.
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Charlie and the Chocolate Factor | Motown
I have two favorite Broadway love songs...they are "Love Changes Everything" from Aspects of Love, and "So In Love" from Kiss Me Kate! I think that both of these songs are beautiful, both melodically and lyrically, and they perfectly capture so much about what it can feel like to be in love.
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Trip of Love
I love "I Can Hear the Bells" from Hairspray. It just captures what you feel when you really like someone.
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Pictures from Home | My Fair Lady | Fiddler on the Roof | The Addams Family |
My favorite Broadway love song is “Where or When” by Rogers and Hart from Babes in Arms. Aside from that achingly beautiful melody, I love the mystery of déjà vu in the lyrics. How can this person we’ve just met and that we’re falling for seem so wonderfully familiar? It’s as if we “met before and laughed before and loved before” on some stellar plane outside of time and space, “but who knows where or when?” And suddenly they’re now here with us, where they’ve somehow always been, and where they always belong.
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HAIR
"Master of the House" from LES MISERABLES
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School of Rock | Legally Blonde
My favorite is "Love to Me" from The Light In the Piazza.
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Sunset Boulevard | Carousel
Being a father of five, the one that comes to mind is the one that the father sings in The Addams Family, "Happy/Sad". I find it so charming that he is singing a love song to his daughter, handing her off in marriage.
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Tuck Everlasting | Amazing Grace | All the Way
The two Broadway love songs that found their way into my heart during my adolescent cast album binge period are still very much there today: "Love Song" from Pippin and "I Won't Send Roses" from Mack & Mabel. That dichotomy explains me about as well as I can be explained.
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Red Roses | Green Gold
“Til There Was You” from The Music Man
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Tales from the Guttenberg Bible | Relatively Speaking | The Exonerated | Prelude to a Kiss
"Some Enchanted Evening" from South Pacific stirs my soul. Rodgers and Hammerstein created a love song that defies time , changes in culture, and an ever evolving society. Love stays put, as the world keeps spinning.
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Billy Elliot Broadway & West End | City of Angels
What an impossible question. But if I go with the first song to come into my head, it would have to be 'If I Loved You' from Carousel. Ravishing combination of harmony & lyrics. On another day, it might be 'In Buddy's Eyes' from Follies. Complicated & ambiguous, it blows me away when I hear it.
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You Can't Take It With You | Anything Goes | Twentieth Century | Gypsy | Hairspray
"Our Love Is Here to Say." It's one of my husband's favorite songs and they sang it at our wedding 23 years ago.
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The Lion King
My favorite love song is "What About Love" from The Color Purple. It is the perfect example of how two unlikely hearts find love, throwing all caution to the wind amidst a ton of doubt and many obstacles. Sort of like the most beautiful orchid can grow in the rockiest soil, because love is love is...you know the rest.
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How to Succeed | Cry Baby | In My Life | Rent
'Say It Somehow' from The Light in the Piazza is by far my favorite Broadway love song.
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Legally Blonde
It's a toss up between "As Long as You're Mine" from WICKED (and that may be bc when Norbert Leo Butz sings it...I Melt!) and "Sunrise" from IN THE HEIGHTS.
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Grease: You're The One That I Want | Thoroughly Modern Millie | The Fantasticks | Beauty and the Beast
"The Next 10 Minutes" from THE LAST 5 YEARS.
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Legally Blonde
The most romantic broadway song ever (to me) would have to be (PS... this is a very hard question to answer because I have so many) But the first song that comes to my mind is Only Love...lol! From The Scarlet Pimpernel.. I know that it isn't super romantic... but there is such a romantic note behind it all...so i say ONLY LOVE from THE SCARLET PIMPERNEL... final answer :)
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Chicago | Les Miserables in Concert
There are so many songs I love, but I'd have to say "Something Wonderful" from THE KING AND I is definitely one of the most romantic ones I've heard.
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Kimberly Akimbo
“Love, You Didn’t Do Right By Me” from Irving Berlin’s White Christmas. It’s a gorgeous song that explains exactly how we all feel about it. I was never a big fan of Valentine’s Day, so this song is for everyone who also isn’t big on Valentine’s Day. “As they say in the song, you done me wrong”. Dump him!
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Ain't Too Proud | Beautiful | Guys and Dolls | The Color Purple
My favorite Broadway love song is “When I First Saw You” from Dreamgirls and it’s because it’s one of the first love songs that I learned from a Broadway show and it’s such a powerful song and a very tender moment, and a moment where Curtis is really trying to let Deena know just what she means to him, and it’s a very tenuous moment in the show so I love that song a lot.
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Mr. Saturday Night
Omg easy! "Elaborate Lives" from Aida hands down. Heather Headley and Adam Pascal. Love me some star crossed lover storytelling. It’s either that or "Wheels of a Dream" from Ragtime. No better love story than a Heather Headley + Audra McDonald mashup!
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The Robber Bridegroom | Peter and the Starcatcher | Avenue Q | Phantom of the Opera
"If Ever I Would Leave You"- from Camelot
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Stephen Sondheim's Old Friends | Moulin Rouge!
It's not really a love song. The one that hits me the most is "Being Alive" from Company. It's that for me, and encapsulates life and about the love of life. That one's special.
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Cinderella | Mame | On the Town | Thoroughly Modern Millie
When I was a girl, I had a lovely white stuffed elephant that played "Some Enchanted Evening" from South Pacific. Both the music and the elephant were very consoling to a rather overwrought eight year old. I have always loved the song and even now think of it unexpectedly. "Who can explain it? Who can tell you why? Fools give you reasons, Wise men never try."

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