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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
Trip of Love
My favorite is "With Every Breath I Take" from City of Angels because it's hauntingly beautiful and complex.
Performer
The Phantom of the Opera | Lestat | Side Show
I'm gonna go with "Tonight" from West Side Story. I still get chills during the intro, "Only you, you're the only thing I'll see forever." It's so innocent and pure and then it erupts into this musical heart beat of "suns and moons" that's so primal and thrilling. By the final "sleep well and when you dream, dream of me...", I'm gone!
Performer
Once | Cyrano de Bergerac
I would say my favorite love song, especially for Valentine’s Day and equally poignant at weddings, is "Colour My World" by Chicago. That tune is just a beautiful, simple but deep, powerful love song.
Performer
Tuck Everlasting | Soul Doctor | Wonderland | A Chorus Line
It may not be my favorite love song of all time, but my boyfriend and I have an adorable relationship with it's own brand of silliness. He is in finance and not in theatre, and for his birthday this past year, I wanted to give him a present that would sum up our relationship, so I recorded Heisler and Goldrich's "There's Nothing I Wouldn't Do" as a solo at Speakersonic Studios in Brooklyn. I hired a full band and we jammed out on my little untraditional, but completely full of "love" song.
Performer
Falsettos | Prince of Broadway | The Book of Mormon
It's definitely *sings* "In whatever time we have, for as long as we are living" from Children of Eden.
Performer
Dear Evan Hansen | Tuck Everlasting | Cat on a Hot Tin Roof | How To Succeed... | Little Me
My favorite Valentine love song is kind of an anti-love song, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar. Happy Valentine’s Day!
Performer
Kinky Boots | Smokey Joe's Café | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
I'm gonna say "So In Love" by Cole Porter. To me, it sounds like being unable to help the fact that you love someone. The idea of falling in love happens in spite of yourself sometimes.
Performer
Wolf Hall: Parts 1 and 2 | The Merchant of Venice
Probably hve to be "Heaven” from Top Hat, or if I am in character (King Henry VIII), "Greensleeves"!
Performer
Cats | School of Rock | On the Twentieth Century | Ragtime
My favorite Broadway love song is new to me, and it’s actually in our show, it’s called “Love Never Dies” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Love Never Dies, and I had never heard this song until I knew I was coming to do this show, and I wanted to make sure I listened to some of Andrew’s music that I wasn’t as familiar with. And so, I listened to the album for Love Never Dies, which I shamefully had never heard, and that song is evocative and beautiful, and it captures a mood. I’m living for it right now. So, “Love Never Dies”, favorite Broadway love song.
Performer
Look Back in Anger | The Importance of Being Earnest
'Somewhere' from West Side Story breaks my heart. My
favorite person singing it is my friend and phenomenal performer Nina Negri.
Performer
Wit | Jitney
I think one of my favorite Broadway love songs is "Some Enchanted Evening." I know it's super old school and it's not a full-on "I love you, I love you" but it's that spark that happens when you first feel the feeling. I grew up listening to one of the versions of the soundtrack to South Pacific. The concept of seeing someone across a crowded room and that magic that happens always got me and it still does.
Performer
White Christmas | 42nd Street | The Green Bird
I was raised on jazz and movie musicals so my favorite is straight from the standards. Having just done a wonderful Irving Berlin musical, it may seem like I am just choosing what is fresh in my mind, but Berlin is timeless for me, and his music draws on memories of my wedding. My husband and I danced our first dance to an Ella Fitzgerald's version of "Always". I know its not necessarily a traditional Broadway song, but its song that speaks to me with such touching simplicity:
Not for just an hour,
Not for just a day,
Not for just a year,
But always.
Director
Pippin | Porgy and Bess | Hair | Artistic Director A.R.T
“With You” from PIPPIN.
Performer
Six
My favorite Broadway love song is definitely "Without You" from RENT. I've been lucky enough to be in the show and sing that song, but until I met my husband I don't think I really understood the gravity of the lyrics. The song carries so much weight and, to me, it so accurately describes what it means to truly be in love with your person.
Performer
Wicked | Seussical | Mamma Mia! | Hollywood Arms | Chicago | Crazy For You
Hands down my favorite Broadway love song is from Michael John LaChiusa’s Hello Again…."The One I Love." The song holds personal significance, as I met my husband during that show’s run, and years later Janine LaManna sang it gorgeously at our wedding. Musically and lyrically that song has always expressed for me the vulnerable yearning we all have to find that person who completes you, whose life you want intertwined with yours. My heart still swells every time I hear it.
Performer
Jersey Boys
"Falling Slowly" from Once. I'll never forget the first time I heard this song, with it's haunting orchestration and lyrics. There's almost a plea or yearning to the music. It's that magical feeling of seeing someone for the first or last time, and begging them to grab your hand and save you.
Performer
Newsical the Musical | Talk Radio | Little Me
"I Won't Send Roses" (Mack & Mabel) It's all about how the lyrics say, "Run away, you don't want me I'm trouble." But the longing in the melody says, "I'm lying, I love you."
Performer
Kinky Boots | Wicked
“Written in the Stars” from Aida. It's a song about how two people of opposite lives can deal with opposition and difficulties to remain together. It's also about destiny, fate, and love! Not to mention being locked in a box and chained together for eternity in a tomb!
Industry
Dead Outlaw | Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown | Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
"As Long As He Needs Me" from Oliver! It's an odd song and I think it's really honest. I think Lionel Bart really got to the heart of something there.
Performer
In Transit
Hmm...that's a tough one but I'd definitely have to go with "You Matter to Me" from Waitress. It's literally one of the most beautiful love songs ever written in my opinion.
Performer
Fun Home
"Say it Somehow" from Light in the Piazza. This is one of my favorite love songs. Love transcends language and I'm a sucker for a lovey duet.
Performer
Mamma Mia | Spider-Man:Turn Off the Dark
My favorite Broadway love song is 'Unusual Way' from Nine. So wonderful!
Performer
The Iceman Cometh | Chicago | Five Guys Named Moe (Writer)
"Maria", from WEST SIDE STORY -- it tells it all...
Performer
Puffs
"Tonight" from West Side Story. The whole song is the feeling of first falling in love: the heartbeat created by the strings, the way the tempo ebbs and flows almost like someone getting excited and then taking a deep breath over and over. Plus, you can't beat the lyric ‘today the world was just an address/a place for me to live in/no better than all right/now here you are/and what was just a world is a star.
Performer
Leap of Faith | Priscilla Queen of the Desert | Next to Normal | The Scarlet Pimpernel
"L-O-V-E" because it's so buyant.
Performer
The Phantom of the Opera | Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme | The Secret Garden | The Sound of Music
My absolute favorite Broadway love song is "What's the Use of Wond'rin'" from Carousel. You love with your heart and soul knowing in the end you will be decimated - and still you love.
Performer
The Phantom of the Opera | Love Never Dies
“Almost like Being in Love” from Brigadoon. I love how it perfectly captures the excited essence of that first rush of feelings for someone!
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