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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
Into the Woods | Pretty Woman | Groundhog Day | Rocky | On The Twentieth Century
My favorite Broadway song, I'm choosing one from Groundhog Day, because it means so much to me, it's so important to me. It's called "Seeing You." It is about seeing someone maybe you've seen every day of your life over and over again but then taking a chance to see them for the first time, reset your brain, look through their eyes. It's beautiful and I can't wait to sing it.
Performer
A Christmas Carol | The Color Puple | If/Then | Once on This Island
I love "What About Love" from The Color Purple. This song speaks of the surprise and exhilaration of love discovered between two unlikely hearts.
Performer
Heart of Rock and Roll | Bandstand | Newsies | Gigi
"You Matter to Me" from Waitress has been on me and my wife's playlist recently. It's so incredibly beautiful, and it has extra contextual beauty knowing we are going to have a baby in April!
Performer
Merrily We Roll Along | Carousel | Significant Other | Wicked | Grease | Godspell
It's not a Broadway love song but it's Barbra Streisand so I feel like it would qualify, which is "The Way We Were." It's so romantic and it's not sappy, there's history to it and then thinking about the way Marvin Hamlisch laid it all out. For me it's the best.
Performer
Little Shop of Horrors | Hedwig and the Angry Inch | Kinky Boots
My favorite Broadway love song is "The Origin of Love," obviously. I mean, how can it not? It's a beautiful song, it's beautifully written lyrics, it's the perfect song. The perfect love song.
Performer
Aladdin | In Transit | Allegiance | Godspell | Pacific Overtures
My current favorite Broadway love song is “We Are Home,” a song written for me and Justin Guarini for In Transit. Love singing it to my sweet show-hubby Justin 8 times a week!
Performer
Hello Dolly! | Thoroughly Modern Millie | Big Fish | Giant | Finian's Rainbow
My favorite Broadway love song is "My Heart is so Full of You" from The Most Happy Fella.
Performer
Come From Away | Chaplin | If/Then
How about "The Next Ten Minutes" from Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years? "There are so many dreams I need to see with you. There are so many years I need to be with you. I will never be complete, I will never be alive, I will never change the world until I do." Ah, it makes my knees tremble.
Performer
Newsies | Tuck Everlasting
My favorite Broadway love song is "So Many People" from Saturday Night. Despite being gay himself, Stephen Sondheim rarely depicts the gay experience in his work. Yet in his first musical, I find these lyrics striking. "And if they tell us it's a thing we'll outgrow, they're jealous as they can be / That with so many people in the world you love me." I'm not sure if it's subliminal or just unintentional, but I remember hearing this song for the first time as a teenager and feeling a little less alone.
Creative
Dear Evan Hansen | A Christmas Story | Dogfight
“Soon It’s Gonna Rain” from The Fantasticks is it for me. Two young people stealing away and singing a love song, together alone for the first time. Gorgeously poetic yet simple lyrics paired with such lush but restrained music. What an easy song to get lost in. I remember playing it for my wife on an early date of ours…you can decide if that’s terribly romantic or terribly nerdy…or both?
Performer
Sunset Boulevard | Prince of Broadway
"Too Much In Love To Care" from Sunset Boulevard. It depicts the crisis of falling in love with the right person at the wrong time and how they defy all odds to pursue this love regardless. Truly passionate and romantic yet troubled, flawed and utterly human.
Performer
Leopoldstadt | Falsettos | An American in Paris | Baby It's You
"What Would I Do" from Falsettos. Because it's flawlessly heartbreaking. I DARE YOU TO DISAGREE.
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.
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
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.
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
Shucked | Tootsie | Journey's End | Significant Other
My favorite Broadway love song this year for Valentine's Day is anything that Lora Lee Gayer sang in Holiday Inn because, see ya on Valentine's Day, honey. Any of those songs, "White Christmas," sure.
Performer
The Present
"This Nearly Was Mine," South Pacific. That optimistic flush of post-war America, a world of feisty-but-adorable sopranos and dashing Italian baritones, in the midst of impossibly lush tropical locations… Aah.
Performer
Beardo
My favorite Broadway love song is "Do You Love Me?" from Fiddler on the Roof. My wife and I met during a production of Fiddler on the Roof, I was Motel the Tailor and she was a Russian Dancer. Whenever we hear the song, we both just bawl- because it's simple and honest and isn't afraid to be emotional.
Performer
West Side Story | The Mystery of Edwin Drood | She Loves Me
My favorite Broadway love song is "Maria" because it's perfect. It's from West Side Story. 'Nuff said.
Performer
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | Cinderella | Memphis | Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
I'd have to say, "On the Street Where You Live". The idea that you can be so obsessed and enraptured with someone that you're happy just being near a place that that love of your life may possibly be? Seems like the ultimate love to me.
Performer
Significant Other | Company | Fiddler on the Roof
"Sunrise, Sunset," written by my brother-in-law. It is a love song for everybody, isn't it? It's what jumped to my mind. There were some songs in Follies but I really have to think about that. Then we had a song in Company, "Sorry/Grateful." That's a great song.
Performer
In Transit
My favorite Broadway love song is "My Friends" from Sweeney Todd. I want someone to look at me like Sweeney looks at razor blades.
Performer
Natasha | Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812
There are so many incredible songs to choose from, but instantly my mind went to "With So Little To Be Sure Of" from Anyone Can Whistle. Something about the strength love gives us, how that moment of connection with another person can create stability at moments when the world around you seems to be going truly crazy. And how that can help one believe in oneself even once that moment of connection is over: "Being sure enough of you made me sure enough of me."
Performer
Natasha | Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812
“If I Loved You” from Carousel is so classic. I love that doesn't come right out and get the point. Billy and Julie both flirt with the possibility of hooking up and maybe a life together and they essentially commit without without ever saying it. Also “Her Face” from Carnival has one of the most beautiful melodies.
Performer
The View Upstairs
"Bewitched, Bothered, & Bewildered"... "Vexed again, perplexed again… thank God I can be oversexed again!" For me, this tune captures the joy and ache of longing perfectly. I particularly love Justin Vernon’s rendition which he recorded with his high school jazz ensemble as a fundraiser for their music program. It knocks my socks off.
Performer
Beardo
It doesn't get much better than “They Say It's Wonderful” from Annie Get Your Gun. The slight melodic changes on the repetitions of "wonderful" melt me. Also a great shower song.
Performer
School of Rock | Kinky Boots
My favorite Braodway love song is "Love to Me" by Adam Guettel.
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