Love Like This (2016 Remaster)

Picture this: You've orchestrated the perfect at-home date for your significant other featuring candles, wine, and a lovingly home-cooked (or lovingly ordered via app) dinner. But just as your person texts you that they're on their way, you realize that you have no idea what sort of music to play to retain the romantic ambience. After all, you can't have your early 2000s guilty pleasure songs come up on shuffle while you're trying to stare lovingly into your partner's eyes (nothing ruins the mood like the distinctive "youuuuuu" at the beginning of "Soulja Boy." And yes, that example is based on a true story). For that reason, I've compiled this list of the best love songs of all time, spanning every genre.

Love Like This (2016 Remaster)

There's something in here for everyone, whether you're a fan of hip hop, classic rock, country, or pop. Queue this playlist up on your next date night, or satiate your inner romantic next time you're in your feelings. Whatever the context, I promise you won't be disappointed. (P.S. If you're looking for the best love songs of 2022 specifically, or songs for Valentine's Day, we've got those too.)

Rationale: When the outside world becomes brutal, many couples turn inward and develop that us-against-the-world mindset. In "ROS," Mac Miller captures what it's like to feel close to someone, spending much of this song describing the little things he loves about his partner, like her "stained glass" eyes, butterscotch-scented skin, and kiwi-flavored lips. The lyrics are intimate in every way, and Mac delivers them with characteristic rawness.

Rationale: This song hits me right in the chest. It's impossible not to feel your arms and chest aching like Reddings' when he sings about wanting to hold his beloved. The music crescendos around his smooth voice as he begs, "And if you would let them hold you/ Oh, how grateful I would be." It's such a sweet, earnest plea for love, and its focus on physicality is pretty sexy, too.

Rationale: No one knows how to obliterate me emotionally quite like Lauryn Hill does. In "Ex Factor" (and on this whole album), she's incredibly vulnerable, baring all in her devotion to her beau. In this song, we recognize straightaway that her relationship is toxic, but Hill's honesty is so beautiful that we humble listeners have no choice but to sit, transfixed, and listen.

Rationale: When this song came out in 2007, I was in middle school, and 12-year-old me incessantly crooned along about "the sink of blood and crushed veneer," as though my childhood had been rife with tragic love affairs.

I've distanced myself from many of my middle school interests, but this song still holds up. Bon Iver is a master at depicting what it's like to fully surrender yourself to someone while aware that they may hurt you in the end. I still sing this song while I lounge around my studio apartment, drawing on real-life experiences this time, though I assure you that none of them involved blood-filled sinks or crushed veneers.

Rationale: Ah, yes. The song that plays at every wedding on earth. Popular songs are popular for a reason, though, and this one endures because of the unconditional love that it depicts. In addition to Sinatra's version, I also love Fred Astaire's rendition in the 1936 film Swing Time and the sweet yet funny visuals go along with it.

Rationale: If you read the lyrics without the music, this song feels like a late nineteenth century poem. The love it describes is so pure and hopeful, and you'll definitely gain cool-points by playing The Black Keys on a first date.

Rationale: No one does unbridled love like Amy Winehouse. Her soulful voice takes center stage in this Phil Spector cover, and if you're not already in love, it will make you want to be.

Rationale: Here, Hozier is trying to convince his love interest to forget that they both have pasts (who doesn't?) and to focus on loving in the present. There's a sense that both people in the song consider themselves odd in some way (again, who doesn't?), and that they've been searching for partners like each other for ages. "Like Real People Do" reminds us of how miraculous it feels to love and be loved back.

Rationale: What a throwback! Ingrid Michaelson was responsible for some of the sweetest manic-pixie-dream-girl love songs of the early 2000s, and this one was her most popular. Michaelson rejoices in having found a partner who loves her, flaws and all, and she responds in kind, promising to repair what her partner breaks and to buy him Rogaine when his hair starts falling out.

Rationale: Oh, Ezra Koenig, how you wound me with your beautiful words! In this song, our narrator seems to be moving around the U.S. with his beloved Hannah until she grows homesick for the east coast. Having lived in New England for around seven years, I'm partial to this song for its "freezing beaches" references, but it's also a gentle tribute to the way time glides away when you're with someone you love.

Rationale: Yes, this song is 90 percent just Karen O singing "Wait, they don't love you like I love you," but it's so powerful! If you say something the right way, and the accompanying music is good enough, there's no need to embellish much more. Proof: Beyoncé clearly nods to this song in her 2016 single "Hold Up." "Maps" endures, over a decade later, across genres.

Rationale: I cried when I saw The Roots perform this live. Erykah reassures her boyfriend during the chorus that she'll always be loyal to him, while Black Thought (lead MC of The Roots) uses his verses to tell the story of a lifelong romance. It's the best love song in hip hop, hands down.

Rationale: We should heal ourselves rather than wait around for someone to heal us, but that doesn't mean that love can't be a healing experience. It's very romantic to thank someone for making you feel good, and that's precisely what this song (written by the flawless Carole King) is about.

Rationale: Elvis tells his love not to get jealous or to believe the rumors about him being with women, reassuring her that she's the one for him. Although multiple sources have claimed that Elvis did, indeed, cheat on his wife, Priscilla, this holds up as one of his sweetest love songs.

Rationale: Conventional advice tells us to fall in love with someone who can be our best friend, and this song is about two lifelong best friends who find their way back to one another after time spent apart. With her famously beguiling voice, Erykah Badu captures the joy of being truly known by a partner.

Rationale: This song sounds like it was written in the '50s or '60s. It's your run-of-the-mill slow song, but there's something charming about the Arctic Monkeys being the ones to perform this retro pledge of devotion.

Rationale: I remember listening to this song in middle school, wishing that the boy I had a crush on would love me enough to stand outside my window in the rain. In retrospect, that would have been awkward and inconvenient to explain to my mother, and these days I would probably find such behavior creepy (when I'm in my pajamas in my apartment, peacefully eating Takis and watching reruns of The Sopranos, the last thing I need is a man standing outside, watching me from the street like something out of The Exorcist), but the sentiment of this song still stands.

Rationale: In this song, which was originally written by lyrical legend Bruce Springsteen, Smith promises her lover that he's safe with her. If you've read Smith's book Just Kids, you'll probably listen to this song and think of her and Robert Mapplethorpe singing and dancing to it down the streets of lower Manhattan.

Thankfully, there are bucket-loads of excellent puzzle games from the past that offer enjoyable, challenging, and rewarding experiences. So, to give puzzle fans some more ideas of what to play next, this list has been updated to include a few more suggestions of puzzle games like Myst.

Grim Fandango was released in October 1998 and is considered to be the final major release of the point-and-click genre's golden age. Grim Fandango provides a fitting end to this golden age, as the game incorporates everything that people loved about LucasArts' games in the genre, with well-written dialogue, genuinely funny humor, and a captivating story.

Like Titanic, An Affair to Remember won numerous Oscars and has become immortalized in pop culture (even inspiring another fabulous romance movie, Sleepless in Seattle) as one of the greatest romance movies of all time. Also, like Titanic, the love story begins on an ocean liner.

But the chemistry between Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman and the memorable love story make this movie stand out. Like Titanic, this is an epic romance you can watch again and again. It won two Oscars and was nominated for many more.

Shakespeare in Love and Titanic each won best picture one year apart. So, if you want to watch another award-winning epic historical romance movie, then this love story about a young Shakespeare falling in love with a new muse (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) should fit the bill.

"I hope to see women thriving and happy, loving what they're doing, and being in control and powerful of what they create," she explained. "As much as we all love the fashion and the makeup and glamour, this isn't a beauty pageant. It's about the heart and the drive and the work."

Naturally, this special homes in on the hits, from "Surfin' U.S.A." to "California Girls" to "Good Vibrations" and beyond. But if you'd like to go deeper, here are 10 memorably zonked deep cuts in their long voyage. (Note: this list focuses less on late-period collaborations and era-specific genre crossovers than core albums from their first two decades.) 041b061a72