All You Need is Love, and a Little Rhythm

“The More You Ruv Someone,” Avenue Q

“The More You Ruv Someone,” the ballad from Avenue Q, has to be one of the silliest love songs ever to hit the Broadway stage. In this song, neighborhood therapist Christmas Eve laments that “the more you ruv someone the more you want to kill them.” Perhaps, on this national day of love, you find you agree with her. The ones you love the most are usually the people who drive you crazy. As the song goes—“love and hate [are] like two brothers ... who go on a date.” So, grab hold of the ones you love and hate and show them how much you care. Spread the ruv!

–Ruthie Fierberg

“You’re Timeless to Me” from Hairspray

Imagine a petite, middle-aged candy-shop owner and a heavily padded man in drag flinging each other across an otherwise empty stage. Include such outrageous lyrics as: “You’re like a stinky old cheese, babe / Just getting riper with age / You’re like a fatal disease, babe / But there’s no cure, so let this fever rage,” and you’ve got Hairspray’s “You’re Timeless to Me,” a self-mocking romp that is just as lively and entertaining as it sounds. But what is perhaps most affecting about “Timeless” is its suggestion that true love defies age and time. While the lyrics are sufficiently humorous to avoid too much “schmaltz” (their words, not mine), this aging married couple still manages to strike a cord.

–Aviva Erlich

“You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from Company

The up-beat “You Could Drive a Person Crazy” from Company is sung by the three girl friends of conflicted bachelor Bobby, and is anything but a conventionally sweet love song. In place of the typically musical theater saccharine, there’s a biting edge in which resides a hilarious—yet striking—amount of truth. They gripe about Bobby’s commitment issues and vent their frustrations with his emotional unavailability. You might listen to it and think that calling the man crazy or comparing him to a zombie is mean, but in the end you have to laugh. Valentine’s Day may be about the prettier side of love, but these ladies have got a point. The truth isn’t all hearts and roses, and this cynical look at the other side of romance is so much fun because it’s true. Props to Sondheim for keepin’ it real.

—Deborah Blumenthal

“Without You” from Rent

Few show tunes can match the sheer, glorious melodrama of “Without You,” the sappiest ballad in Rent, a show that is known for sappy ballads. The heart-wrenching song, in which two AIDS-stricken, lovelorn junkies trade histrionic lyrics like, “The stars gleam / The poets dream / The eagles fly ... But I die / Without you,” is overwrought, but affecting nonetheless. If you can listen to Roger and Mimi really let loose near the end of the song, singing, in succession, “The mind churns / The mind churns! / The heart yearns / The heeaaart yearns!,” and shed nary a tear, then you have no soul, you yuppie scum.

—Hillary Busis

“I’m in Love With A Wonderful Guy” from South Pacific

Sometimes it takes Rodgers and Hammerstein to say what everyone wants to say, if only they lacked self-consciousness. In “I’m in Love With A Wonderful Guy,” from South Pacific, the heroine’s intentions are as clear as her fair complexion, even while bronzing in the island’s sun. As plucky heroine Nellie Forbush sings her heart out about cornfields and kites in the middle of a South Pacific island during World War II, it is finally understood what’s going on in her heart. For all the hemming and hawing, it seems that dear Nellie is still a bit of a racist. Here, Nellie also gets to answer the question about just how white-bread American she is, in contrast to her “wonderful guy’s” biracial children from another marriage. However, what does all that matter? She’s in love, she’s in love, she’s in love (with a wonderful guy). The song is so pro-American that it may as well be written by McCarthy—but what does that matter when a heroine’s in love? Spirited Nellie lives on, bigoted as ever in this superbly patriotic song from 1949, as revival after revival of South Pacific is performed in bad repertoire.

—Jennie Rose Halperin

“In My Life” from In My Life

How much do you enjoy listening to LeAnn Rimes belt out that final chorus of “You Light Up My Life?” Now just imagine an entire musical filled with similar ditties by composer Joe Brooks, the man responsible for that stellar Billboard hit. But on this day of candy hearts and stuffed teddy bears, Brook’s song “In My Life,” from his musical by the same name, seems to offer up the perfect blend of corn and sap. Boasting a profoundly moving chorus,“In my life, there would be you,” this love song belongs to an unlikely pair—girl with OCD meets boy with Tourette’s, and bam, a match made in heaven. No, literally. With an accompanying score bad enough for the New York Times’ chief theater critic to dub this show, “the real ‘Springtime for Hitler’,” if you happened to stumble across the regrettable “In My Life” this Valentine’s Day, save yourself some trouble and stick with the Beatles’ classic instead.

—Laura Hedli