Valentine’s Day! It means so many things to so many people. Maybe you love a good love song. Perhaps you’re sick of the romantic schmaltz. Do sorrowful ballads make your heart swell? Are you trying to heal a broken heart? Newly in love? No matter what’s happening in your realm of love and romance, the CKUA hosts have you covered. They’ve each chosen a song as their Valentine’s Day anthem to share with you. Take a look and a listen. We hope you find a few that truly warm your heart.
“A Woman Like You” by Gramps Morgan
“Here’s my pick. Gramps Morgan took his reggae sounds to Nashville and infused it with some pedal steel among other country tinge to deliver a beautiful and meaningful love song. One that is among my most played songs.” – Leo Cripps, host of Discoveries
“Waiting in Vain” by Bob Marley and The Wailers
“I love this tender heartsick song of longing by Bob Marley from his 1977 masterpiece, Exodus. Tyrone Downie’s tasty synth and organ licks throughout and Junior Marvin’s short guitar solo are pure class. The spare use of harmony vocals, “oooh girl, oooh girl” etc. make me sing along and sway along.” – Amy van Keeken, host of Twilight and Far Out
“The Book of Love” by Peter Gabriel
“Why? It’s one of the very few love songs that tell it like it is:
The book of love has music in it
In fact that’s where music comes from
Some of it’s just transcendental
Some of it’s just really dumb” – Bob Chelmick, host of The Road Home
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
“There is only one for me that remains a classic folk song. It was written by Ewan MacColl for and about Peggy Seeger around 1957. Ewan was not known his expressions of love but at a very complicated time in social history, it’s still an expression of deep love.” – Tom Coxworth, host of Folk Routes
“Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” by Camille Saint-Saëns from the opera Samson and Delilah
“It is an incredibly beautiful and lush piece of music but it is filled with seduction and intrigue as well as Delilah seduces Samson into revealing his deepest secret. One of my favourite recordings of this is an arrangement for trumpet featuring Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth.” – Aaron Au, host of Classical Connections
“Ain’t No Way” by Aretha Franklin
“Not only is her vocal performance stellar and transformative, my heartstrings are pulled by the song because it’s from the perspective of someone who is saying, ‘Let me love you. I have this love to offer you. Please allow yourself to let it in.’ It can be hard to receive love, surrender to it and let it heal and transform you.” – Dawn Pemberton, host of Get On The Good Foot and co-host of On The Rise
“Bitter Green” by Gordon Lightfoot
“I’ve been singing this song to my sweet daughter (whose middle name is Valentina in tribute to my late mom and February baby, Valerie) for her entire life. It’s a beautifully sad ode to enduring love.” – Joe Hartfeil, fill-in host
“The Nearness Of You” by Abbey Lincoln and Hank Jones
“This beautiful love song definitely resides in the top echelon of the so-called Great American Songbook. There have been countless recordings of this classic down through the years. The one that whispers gently in my ear is the 1993 interpretation by Abbey Lincoln (vocal) and Hank Jones (piano). The combined sounds of these two legendary jazz veterans takes my breath away every time. For my Valentine, Lydia.” – Roy Forbes, host of Roy’s Record Room
“My Luve is Like a Red, Red Rose” by Ēriks Ešenvalds
“An arrangement by Latvian composer Ēriks Ešenvalds, performed by Voces8, accompanied by flutist Gareth McLearnon. A beautiful melody with a wonderful arrangement, and the text seems to just perfectly express a feeling of deep love, and how the love will continue upon the young lad’s return (presumably from battle).” – Orest Soltykevych, host of Raising Voices
“Eruption” by Kyrie Kristmanson
“The sun was beating down on a scorching Prince’s Island Park in Calgary when I caught Kyrie Kristmanson performing with one other person, an acoustic bass player. As temperatures topped 30 degrees she stood poised on the stage wearing what looked like a hand-me-down wedding dress from the set of ‘The Corpse Bride,’ accented by a ushanka. As this young artist from Saskatoon blazed into her set, alternating between singing and belting out lines on her trumpet, she performed the song ‘Eruption’ with a sly wink, knowing that love is at once explosive and fleeting. The magic of that moment still warms my heart!” – Tony King, host of Thoroughfare
“Love Song” by The Cure
“Whatever words I say
I will always love you
I will always love you
(Not my words but I can’t add anything to this.)” – Baba, host of Mid-Morning Mojo
“You Got Me Singing” by Leonard Cohen
“Some of Leonard Cohen’s most beautiful, most circumspect music came late in his life. His 2014 song ‘You Got Me Singing’ is a truly peculiar and utterly lovely combination of world-weary doomsaying and super-sweet love incantation. And you can almost hear a gentle, sly wink as he earnestly intones the final line, ‘You’ve got me singing the Hallelujah song.'” – Grant Stovel, Host of Alberta Morning
“I Get Along Without You Very Well” by Billie Holiday
“I hate to say it but I DO love the sad songs (some of which I’ve lived! Ha!). ‘I Get Along Without You Very Well,’ written by Hoagy Carmichael – a great song of denial, apparently, based on a poem by Jane Brown Thompson. I love it performed by Chet Baker OR Billie Holiday. On the other side, it’s hard to beat the over-the-top declaration of Prince, ‘I Would Die 4 U.’ Do I believe that? Yeah, but it’s a great tune.” – Dianne Donovan, host of Voices in Jazz
“For Your Lover Give Some Time” by Richard Hawley
“Sage advice from Britain’s best balladeer.” – Oskar Zybart, host of In Our Neighbourhood
“If You Don’t Know Me By Now” by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes
“Love and trust are mutually dependent, so much so, that they might well be one and the same. Teddy Pendergrass had just joined the group; this was the first time they had let him take the lead vocal. The result was a chart-topping smash hit, and has been a perennial favorite ever since… Harold Melvin, on the other hand, was less than enamoured with Teddy’s instant super-stardom, but that’s a story for another day…” – Lionel Rault, host of Lionel’s Vinyls