Playlist for the Pathetically Passionate

Wondering if your love letters got lost in the mail? Listen to this playlist instead.

Written by Nicole Wloszek-Therens

Link to the playlist here!

This Valentine’s Day, forget calling up your favorite ex or hoping for roses on your doorstep. Instead, check out these songs that explore love’s imperfect reality rather than its shiny, polished surface. 

1. “Do You Really Like Me” - Junior Varsity

   
   

This introspective track asks the question, “Do you really like me?,” while simultaneously answering it. If you really liked me, you’d know my favorite day of the week is Friday. The spoken-word song feels more like an internal monologue of semi-ridiculous, yet vulnerable, curiosities rather than what is actually appropriate to say aloud. 

2. “He Ain’t The One” - The Violet Mindfield

   
   

This track off the Southern California band’s 2025 release “Distorted Portrait” serves as a warning to those that are quick to let their defense down in the pursuit of love. Is it bitter, or is it brutally honest? “He Ain’t The One” suggests the subject of your affection might not be so deserving. 

3. “Take It As It Comes” - Vivian Girls

   
   

Girl, take my advice. Take it as it comes. This 60s-inspired track is about knowing when it’s time to quit waiting by the phone all night, and it suggests to ignore any graceless temptation you may feel to show up at a man’s doorstep if he doesn’t pick up your call. 

4. “Lunatic To Love” - The Presidents Of The United States Of America

   
   

Love can be irrational, and according to this track, it can be downright absurd. From dramatized depictions of picking a partner up from the asylum to embracing the chaos, this song offers a tongue-in-cheek take on dysfunctional love.  

5. “Hand Springs” - The White Stripes

   
   

Navigating romance sometimes feels like being the little metal ball in a pinball machine, unpredictably whacked from one side to the next. This track was released on a split single with The Dirtbombs in 2000 and serves as a reminder that a date might not always go the way you plan, but there’s no use crying over spilled Coca-Cola.

6. “Some Postman” - The Presidents Of The United States Of America

   
   

This song describes a love-letter-snatching postman, but its true inspiration came when lead singer Chris Ballew mailed out a mixtape, only to be told by the intended recipient that it never arrived. Either way, it’s a track for anyone with confessions of romance that never quite reached their intended destination. 

7. “(I Wanna) Be Your Girl” - Sharp Pins

   
   

This lo-fi song is a little jagged, a little unpolished – just like love. In a way, it almost sounds like a confession recorded on a cassette tape and left in a mailbox, signed from a “secret admirer.”

8. “I Fell In Love Today” - Ween

   
   

While this track aligns with the whimsical and off-kilter nature of Ween’s music, it’s also an earnest confession of how love can make grass appear greener and the sun brighter. 

9.  “Think I’m In Love” - Beck 

   
   

Oh, the terrifying feeling of realizing that you might actually care. With “Think I’m In Love,” Beck captures the hesitancy and nervousness of that vulnerable moment. No grand declarations of love being shouted from the rooftops here; it’s more of an under-the-breath, apprehensive acknowledgement of a quiet suspicion.

10.  “Love You Madly” - Cake

    
    

This isn’t a track about having a perfect, planned and everlasting love. It’s about experiencing love in the moment, and a refusal to cling on once it fades. 

11.  “I Think I Need a New Heart” - The Magnetic Fields

    
    

When love continues to disappoint, the disheartened can get a little introspective. This song is a self-aware reflection that sometimes the problem isn’t on the outside, but rooted deep within.

12.  “lovetown” - The Glands

    
    

This track envisions love as a little town tucked just out of reach – a place that many dream of visiting. It leaves the listener wondering whether love is a home to settle into, or merely a fleeting blur along the highway?

13.  “For Your Love” - Michael Cleveland, Billy Strings and Jeff White

    
    

This jamgrass cover of a 1988 track from Joe Ely captures the frantic nature of love’s pursuit with the urgent sound of a fiddle and declarations like: “For your love, I’d walk a tightrope and wrestle anacondas.” Affection can be restless and all-consuming, a feeling bottled perfectly into the nature of this track.

14.  “The Love Me or Die” - C.W. Stoneking

    
    

In this track, Stoneking describes love as an ultimatum rather than an invitation. Listening feels like eavesdropping in on an incantation muttered over a boiling cauldron. 

15.  “Your Love Is My Drug” - Kesha

    
    

Before most of Gen Z had any real grasp on the concept of love, the 2010 radio hit “Your Love is My Drug” was already teaching us about its messy side. For all of the lovergirls and hopeless romantics, this track gives an all-too-familiar depiction of the obsession of it all.

16.  “U can hav my eyez - Dangers Arms remix” - Frankii, cr1tter 

    
    

What’s more romantic than giving someone your eyes? In this track, cr1tter offers up their sight in a dramatic gesture of the heart. Maybe love really is blind.