Window Seat: A Valentine’s Day Song for Wherever You Are

I’m single this Valentine’s Day, but I love love. Here’s a bunch of songs for various points on the relationship spectrum that aren’t usually celebrated with red roses and candy hearts.

The Magnetic Fields — I Don’t Want to Get Over You

For when you’ve been dumped but you’re still in denial and it’s partially because the idea of moving on and trying to find someone new is too exhausting and depressing because most people are idiots and anyway wallowing in your miserable condition gives you a good excuse to smoke clove cigarettes and drink vermouth.

Bjork — Joga

For when you’re in waaaaaaay over your head and you’re so in love and its intense and overwhelming to a degree that you can barely operate like a normal person because it’s all you can think about, all you can talk about, all you can feel.

Courtney Barnett — Canned Tomatoes (Whole)

For when you’re into someone and they’re clearly not into you but you always have a great time together and so you haven’t totally dropped the torch, but yeah, it’s probably never gonna happen.

Erykah Badu — Window Seat

For when things are getting too hectic and you just want everyone, especially your lover, to leave you the fuck alone for five minutes so you can take some time to get your mind right and simmer down a few notches, only you don’t really want to be left alone, because you need to know that you are seen, and you are missed, and you are wanted.

Paul Westerberg — AAA

For when you’re just so wrecked and exhausted and exasperated with love and life and the world in general and you know that everyone else is too, at least sometimes, and that we’re all just doing the best we can and sometimes it’s enough just to stay alive.

Kate Bush — Running Up That Hill

For when you’re in it, really in it, both of you, and it’s good, but it’s complicated, and you make each other happy but you hurt each other too and you wish there was something you could do to make it easier to understand each other but at the same time you realize it’s impossible to ever really know what it’s like to be another human being.

Todd Rundgren — Can We Still Be Friends?

For when you genuinely love someone but they drive you crazy and not in good ways and you’d do anything for them, take a bullet, hide a body, but you’ve found you don’t work as a couple and you never will and so it’s time to call it off and just hope you can manage to stay in each others’ lives.

Beck — Think I’m in Love

For when you’re realizing you’ve fallen in love but you’ve been fucked over pretty hard before and you’re going down parallel paths in your mind of romantic things you could do together because you find them so intoxicating while also steeling yourself for the possibility that you might get got once again.

The Byrds — I’ll Feel A Whole Lot Better

For when you’ve put up with a lot of shit from someone and you did it because you thought there was a chance that if they would just change slightly, just do what they said they were gonna do, it could be great, really great, but you finally give up and you’re crushed but underlying that you mostly feel relief, like, whoa, go fuck yourself times 1,000.

Little Dragon — Twice

For when you know you’re with a good person and a kind person and they take good care of you but there’s something not there and so you let yourself get led astray, even though it hurts them, and it makes you a terrible, terrible person, but you do it anyway.

Rilo Kiley — More Adventurous

For when your heart’s been broken so many times and you carry the wounds from each one deep, deep inside, and dealing with love often seems like an exercise in suffering but you keep at it anyway because the rewards always seem to outweigh the risks in the end and even if they didn’t, you’d probably keep going anyway, because that’s just what people do.

Brian Eno — I’ll Come Running

For when you’re in love but it’s a pleasant feeling and a source of strength and joy and not anguish, and you’re not too worked up over it, you just find that person wonderful, and you’re content to wait for them as long as you need to because you know that one day they’ll walk through your door and you’ll be ready to receive them.

Eileen — Ces Bottes Sont Faites Pour Marcher

For when you need to tell someone to GTFO of your life, but you’re super cool and French and you can’t even be bothered to tell it to them in a language they can actually understand.

Ella Fitzgerald — Night and Day

For when you’ve made it through this entire fucked up list and you deserve to listen to the purest and most hopeful love song ever, ever, ever.

Happy Valentine’s Day!