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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
ROCK OF AGES | SWEENEY TODD
"Johanna" from SWEENEY TODD and "Maria" from WEST SIDE STORY.
Performer
Cat on a Hot Tine Roof | Curtains | Thou Shalt Not | Ah | Wilderness! | Steel Pier
"I Don't Know Why I Love You Like I Do"
Performer
The Unsinkable Molly Brown | Benny & Joon | Breakfast at Tiffany's
"Love Changes Everything" from Aspects of Love. When you think about each and every one of those lyrics, it captures a little facet of what it feels like to fall in love, to be in love, or to lose a love. It's all of those stages. It's about who you become in going through the process.
Performer
Hands on a Hardbody
My favorite Broadway love song is "There's A Fine, Fine Line" from Avenue Q. It is so true to real love. Love hurts.
Director
Superhero | The Cher Show and Shrek
"If I Loved You" from Carousel because it's a love song that is in a form of a condition and it sort of creeps close to telling someone how they actually feel, but doesn't do it which is really smart and thrilling.
Industry
Managing Partner | aka New York
"Say It Somehow" from The Light in the Piazza. Adam Guettel’s music is unbelievably beautiful and this song touches me every time I listen to it.
Performer
Funny Girl | Sing Street | Wicked
Kander and Ebb's “A Quiet Thing”. "Happiness comes in on tip-toe," Kander and Ebb express so delicately. "Well, what'd'ya know. It's a quiet thing." That's exactly how I feel when I turn and look at my husband, Henry. Thirty-seven years together, and here is happiness. It tip-toed in over the years. Here we are, it came true. A kind of miracle. A very quiet thing.
Performer
Memphis | Mary Poppins | Beauty and the Beast
One is "In Buddy's Eyes" from FOLLIES. The other is not from a show. It's "Heart Like A Wheel," by Kate and Anna McGaringle. If there's a better, more poetic song about the devastation wrought by the loss of love, I don't know what it is.
Industry
The Threepenny Opera | Caligula | Parade | Les Miserables | Follies
Definitely "All The Things You Are" from VERY WARM FOR MAY
Performer
A Man for All Seasons
"What About Love" for The Color Purple. It goes from discovering you're in love with someone to discovering what love is to discovering you have found it.
Performer
School of Rock | Doctor Zhivago | Guys and Dolls
My favorite love song is "How High The Moon" performed by Pat Suzuki. It wasn't a Broadway song, but she was a Broadway actress. That totally counts, right?
Performer
Six | Beautiful | Kinky Boots
Firstly, West Side Story- all of it... "Tonight," "One Hand, One Heart," forget it! Then "Say It Somehow" from The Light in the Piazza. I also love "You Matter to Me" from Waitress. What a spectrum!
Performer
SPIDER-MAN: TURN OFF THE DARK
"I've Never Been In Love Before" from GUYS AND DOLLS
Performer
Anything Goes
Maybe I’m just in a Cole Porter land, but I pick "So In Love" from KISS ME, KATE. My girlfriend really hates when characters in musicals end up singing love songs to each other by the end of their first scene together. This song is completely the opposite. There are years of emotions and memories, good and bad, burning underneath everything sung. It’s such a haunting and passionate declaration of love.
Performer
Wicked | The Wild Party | Lennon
"Too Many Mornings" from Follies. I love the lyric: "All that time wasted, merely passing through, time I could have spent so content wasting time with you."
Performer
Love Never Dies | The Phantom of the Opera
My favorite Broadway love song is “The Phantom of the Opera”. Now that’s a different kind of love, but that’s real love, and it’s my favorite.
Performer
Hello | Dolly! | The People in the Picture | LoveMusik | Children and Art | Wonderful Town | The King and I | Passion
It's going to sound selfish... but "Loving You" from Passion . I think it can mean a lot of different things in different moments.
Performer
Merrily We Roll Along | My Fair Lady | Bombay Dreams
"Good Thing Going" from Merrily We Roll Along because I get to sing it eight times a week at the Laura Pels Theatre.
Performer
Aladdin | Natasha | Pierre | and the Great Comet of 1812
My choice is “Maria” from West Side Story. It is such a romantic song that captures that youthful, hypnotic love that knocks you off your feet so hard, you are left dancing and chanting that person’s name in the streets.
Performer
It Shoulda Been You | Once | Sunday in the Park with George | Assassins
Mine is "My Funny Valentine" because it's just the most beautiful song ever written
Performer
The Lion King
I may be jumping the gun a bit but, "A Whole New World" from Aladdin is my favorite broadway love song. It reminds me of how I felt when I was first courting my wife.
Performer
The Other Josh Cohen
My favorite Broadway love song is not from your typical fairytale romance. The song is “Bring Me to Light” and it’s the closing number of the musical Violet. The lyrics are about asking the people we care about most to help us through life’s journey and find our light in the darkness:
“And as I go along I want you with me
If I tell you my heart has been opened wide
If I tell you I’m frightened
If I show you the darkness I hold inside
Will you bring me to light?”
Performer
Kinky Boots | The Full Monty | City of Angels
My favorite Broadway love song is "Gee, Officer Krupke." It is the first song I learned. And really, what love affair is complete without social disease, cross dressing, and the request to Krup oneself?
Performer
Hands on a Hardbody | Curtains | Minnelli on Minnelli | Steel Peir
My favorite Broadway love song is called "Somebody Older," which Debra Monk sang to me in Steel Pier when she was in love with me and I didn't think I was enough for her. So I broke away from her. And there's a beautiful, beautiful sensitive moment where someone says maybe you don't know what's best for you, I know what's best for you. And that will always be my favorite Broadway love song.
Performer
Encores! Girl Crazy | Ugly Betty
"Cactus Time in Arizona" from GIRL CRAZY. It's really odd but somehow perfect.
Performer
Mouline Rouge! | Fela!
One of my favorites since I was a kid was from Godspell. "By My Side" expresses a very deep love, but it also expresses a type of sacrifice that goes along with that love. When I was first introduced to that song as a teenager, I found it quite profound and mind-boggling.
Director
Aladdin | The Book of Mormon | The Drowsy Chaperone
I couldn't pick between these two, so I guess it's a tie. "The Music That Makes Me Dance" from FUNNY GIRL and "My Heart is So Full of You" from MOST HAPPY FELLA.
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