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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.

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Performer
Rock of Ages | Priscilla Queen of the Desert | Grease | Hairspray
I love the lyrics for "What You Mean to Me" from Finding Neverland. I think it's so intimate and sweet.
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Performer
Next to Normal | Jersey Boys | Side Show
"How Could I Ever Know" from THE SECRET GARDEN. It is a heartbreaking beautiful piece.
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Performer
Girl from the North Country
"I'll Cover You" from Rent. This is the ultimate love song for me; heartbreaking and beautiful. Angel and Collin don’t have much time together, but they relish in each moment like it's their last. They lack so much, but their love is abundant!
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Performer
Titanique | Between the Lines | Cruel Intentions | Kinky Boots | Rock of Ages | Wicked
"It All Fades Away" From Bridges of Madison County is hands down my favorite Broadway love song! Pair Jason Robert Brown's music with Steven Pasquale's voice and I'm done for!
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Performer
Superhero | Cats | The Color Purple (original and revival)
"Dulcinea" from Man of La Mancha. We all have someone in our lives that makes our heart beat faster and our blood boil that much more.
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Performer
Natasha | Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812
I'm a sucker for Cole Porter and that era of musical theatre, so my favorite Broadway love song is "So In Love" from Kiss Me, Kate. It's got such a haunting melody, on top of gorgeous chord progressions. The lyrics are also heartbreaking, and ultimately so playable in the acting. I just think it's stunning, and it gets a reprise at the end. Beautiful.
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Performer
Jagged Little Pill | On the Town | Million Dollar Quartet | Cry-Baby | Company
My favorite Broadway love song is “(At Your Best) You Are Love”. I love the lyrics, I think they are so exquisite, so poetic.
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Industry
The Little Mermaid | Young Frankenstein | 25th Annual Putnum County Spelling Bee | Assassins | Once on this Island | Sunday In The Park With George | Beauty and the Beast | My Favorite Year | Guys and Dolls
I think Rupert Holmes' "Perfect Strangers" from THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD is romantic in a very haunting manner. It captures the sense of 'what might have been'; romance on a very intimate, gentle scale
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Performer
WONDERLAND | MARTIN SHORT: FAME BECOMES ME
The romantic song that I'm very fond of is, "They Can't Take That Away From Me" by the Gershwin Brothers. I love the specific lyrics. This person sings off key, holds their knife weird, and sips their tea funny, yet they haunt my dreams and changed my life! I find it so charming and sweet.
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Performer
Natasha | Pierre | and the Great Comet of 1812 | Myths and Hymns | The Kid | The Threepenny Opera
It's a tie between “My Heart is So Full Of You” from The Most Happy Fella (Liz Callaway's version will floor you) and “Love To Me” from The Light In The Piazza
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Performer
Mothers and Sons | Big Fish | Yank! | Ragtime | 110 In The Shade | Master Harold and the Boys
My pick is "If Ever I Would Leave You" from CAMELOT.
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Performer
Columbia Records | Release Planning
One of my favorite romantic Broadway love songs is "My Heart is So Full of You" by Frank Loesser from THE MOST HAPPY FELLA
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Producer
Moulin! Rouge
My favorite Broadway love song is “Not While I’m Around” from Sweeney Todd because I like blood.
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Performer
Avenue Q
My favorite Broadway love song is a tie between So Many People from Saturday Night and, though not a 'traditional' love song, "Somebody Somewhere" from The Most Happy Fella.
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Creative
Producer and Composer for such artists as Celine Dion | Barbra Streisand | Bonnie Tyler | Meat Loaf | Sisters Of Mercy | Barry Manilow | Air Supply and (Currently) The Dream Engine | Theatre: Whistle Down the Wind (w/ Andrew Lloyd Webber) | Dance of the Vampires
For me, the most romantic song ever written for the theatre is DEFINITELY "Epiphany" from SWEENEY TODD. Not an obvious choice, but consider: an overwhelmingly powerful outpouring of dark, obsessive, romantic yearning, loss, and emotional waves and torrents. It is powerfully romantic in the sections,set to the "JOHANNA" motif, expressing the love of the lost: Johanna, then Lucy, and finally the crushing embrace of Vengeance and Salvation, the love of what can finally triumphantly be ATTAINED. "Theres a hole in the world/Like a great black pit/And it's filled with people/Who are filled with shit/And the vermin of the world inhabit it--BUT NOT FOR LONG!" Dark exultation that is almost ecstatic. "We all deserve to die!/ And I'll never see Johanna, No, I'll never hug my girl to me" A lament so charged that it is heightened and achingly sensuous. "And my Lucy lies in ashes/And I'll never see my girl again/But the work waits/I'm alive at last/And I'm full of joy!" This is truly erotic, musically and lyrically. This is the ONLY song from theatre that I've mesmerized known rock n'rollers with! It is that febrile, feverish, and heartshattering. A romance for LOVE LOST but VISION CREATED! Thank you, Mr, Sondheim. With transcendence and tumescence. All the other"romantic songs" sound like a little music box next to this mighty church organ. Of course, I confess to having written "Once upon a time there was light in my life/Now there's only love in the dark/Nothing I can do/A total eclipse of the heart."
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Creative
Whats That Smell? The Sounds of Human Loving | Mademoiselle Death | Shopping Out Loud
Every year around Valentines Day, the Pointer Sisters continue to inspire me: "I want somebody with a slow hand I want a lover with an easy touch I want somebody who will spend some time Not come and go in a heated rush" So many of the guys I meet take the joy out of lovemaking with their hurried, desperate, orgasm-driven, almost violent approach. But if I have to pick a favorite love song from a Broadway show (and I wouldn't dream of choosing my own song, "He Died Inside Me," from my unproduced musical Private Benjamin), I guess I would have to choose "Secret Soul" from the deeply misunderstood Broadway musical, Jane Eyre. A soaring, plangent yelp of yearning, unrequited love. Kleenex, please--and if you have Kleenex with Aloe Vera, I would appreciate the extra relief! xx, Jacob Sterling
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Performer
Girl from the North Country | Shrek | Cry-Baby | High Fidelity | Tarzan
The Broadway love songs that are my favorites tend to be about unrequited love or love that can't exist. I have a top 5. 5. "Unexpected Song" (Song and Dance); 4. "Unusual Way" (Nine); 3. "Not a Day Goes By" (Merrily We Roll Along); 2. "How Could I Ever Know" (The Secret Garden); 1. "Something Wonderful" (The King and I)
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Performer
Forbidden Broadway
"Too Many Mornings" Follies, Sondheim "So Many People" Saturday Night, Sondheim "The Way You Look Tonight" Kern and Fields "Love to Me" Light in the Piazza, Guettel
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Industry
Founding Executive Director - New York Musical Theatre Festival
"Sue Me" from GUYS AND DOLLS. I just love the mix of love and frustration, which is every relationship I've ever had! And my girlfriend was singing it when I first met her, so that's gotta mean something...
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Performer
WONDERLAND
"There's a Fine, Fine Line" from AVENUE Q....I mean it's a love song, a one sided love song, and ultimately speaks of the confusing complexity of love. I remember seeing the show and turning to the person next to me and saying, "There is a puppet making me cry!" And of course "You Rule My World" from THE FULL MONTY. So perfectly written for both Act 1 and Act 2. A song about how real love sees past imperfections, and only sees the person....Bwahhhh ah ah! (sobs).
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Performer
Tootsie | Hand to God | On A Clear Day You Can See Forever | Avenue Q | The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
'My Blanket and Me' from You're a Good Man Charlie Brown
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Performer
Les Miserables | Fiddler on the Roof
Maury Yeston's "Unusual Way" from NINE and "I Believe" from SPRING AWAKENING. Gorgeous, both of them!
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Performer
It's Only a Play | The Front Page
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Performer
Rock of Ages | The Boy From Oz | The Full Monty | Titanic
Here's my two cents... Hands down, the most beautiful and romantic song of all time is "All the Things You Are," by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II. If it's been awhile since you've heard it, or you have never heard it (shame on you), I strongly encourage giving it a listen. It's purely the most amazing combination of lyric and melody as has ever been written. "...someday my happy arms will hold you, and someday I'll know that moment divine...when all the things you are, are mine." It just doesn't get better, and when I sang it to a former girlfriend she about died. Eventually we broke up, and it turns out she was not real nice - kinda mean. But that doesn't change how awesome the song is.
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Performer
American Psycho | Evita | Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark
"Falling Slowly" from Once. The simple, yet profoundly human poetry; that acoustic guitar; the melody that seeps through pores into veins, and drips through places in your heart you may have never known were cracking or already broken.
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Director
Kimberly Akimbo | Anything Goes | Butley | The Odd Couple | Design for Living
“I Wish I Were In Love Again” because it’s the song my husband and I sang to each other in the show that we met.
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Performer
Puffs
"People Will Say We're in Love" from Oklahoma! Maybe I'm too influenced by the Hugh Jackman/Trevor Nunn/NT version, but I always find Curly and Laurie throwing caution to the wind and finally admitting, at long last, that dammit they're in love with each other is incredibly moving. Similar to Beatrice and Benedick at the end of Much Ado.
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Performer
Flashdance | Urinetown
“I Have a Love” from West Side Story.
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Performer
Irish Rep’s O’Casey Cycle
“Falling Slowly” - Once. I love this song so much, it has such a beautiful haunting quality that really embodies that indescribable feeling of falling in love.
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Performer
Liza's At the Palace!
"IF I LOVED YOU" from Carousel.

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