Coldplay: A Message

A Message is a song for lovers who don’t have the fairy-tale love relationship. If you have gone through tough times and are better together, then this is a song to tell your story. The lyrics and melody were inspired by John Ireland’s 1664 hymn My Song Is Love Unknown.

The Beatles: And I Love Her The Telegraph file picture

Pink Floyd: Pigs On The Wing

Pigs on the Wing is a two-part song by Pink Floyd from its 1977 concept album Animals.

“If you didn’t care/What happened to me/And I didn’t care for you/We would zig-zag our way/ Through the boredom and pain/ Occasionally glancing up through the rain”... writes Roger Waters as “a declaration of love to his wife Carolyne Christie”. The song is significantly different from the other three songs on the album — Dogs, Pigs and Sheep — in that the other songs are dark, whereas this one is lighter-themed and much shorter in duration.

Dave Matthews Band: Crush

The song is “dedicated to Ashley Harper, Dave Matthews’ wife, and the lyrics express a man’s passion for his lover” as he sings:

“Lovely lady/Let me drink you please/I won’t spill a drop, I promise you/Lying under this spell you cast on me.”

This sensuous jazz-pop groover sounds like a fresh romance unfolding in a smoke-filled club of the type that doesn’t exist anymore, or maybe only existed in movies.

Bill Withers: Ain’t No Sunshine

The song was released as a single in 1971, becoming a breakthrough hit for Withers, who was inspired to write this song after watching the 1962 movie Days of Wine and Roses. For the song’s third verse, “Withers had intended to write more lyrics instead of repeating the phrase ‘I know’ 26 times, but then followed the advice of his co-musicians to leave it that way”.

U2: With Or Without You

Ostensibly a troubled love song, the track’s lyrics were inspired by Bono’s conflicting feelings about the lives he led as a touring musician and a domestic man with a family. “Sleight of hand and twist of fate/ On a bed of nails she makes me wait/ And I wait, without you”.

Neither facets of his life define him truly for what he is, but rather the tension between the two does. The lyric and Bono’s performance is a reminder of the melancholia of attachment and how repressing desires only make them stronger.

The Beatles: And I Love Her

No ‘love songs’ mixtape should exist without a song from the greatest rock ’n’ roll band of all time — The Beatles. This was one of the first pop songs with a title that starts in mid-sentence. And I Love Her was one of the songs featured in The Beatles’ film, A Hard Day’s Night. The group played it during the ‘studio performance’ sequence.

“Bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky/I know this love of mine/Will never die/And I love her”, writes McCartney, as he describes the imagery of the stars and the sky and how it makes him feel for his love. Having the word ‘and’ in the title of the song is just the kind of old-school cool that makes the phrase so potent. You’re right up to speed the moment you hear it, no matter when or where you hear it!

Death Cab for Cutie: I’ll Follow You Into The Dark

Written and performed by Ben Gibbard, it is an acoustic solo ballad and was recorded in monaural with a single microphone and little editing. Being in his late 20s when the song was written, growing older during an ideal and comfortable time of his life led him to begin obsessing over death, the afterlife, and the weight of his relationships. He started to take stock of the importance of the people in his life and felt a need to say something about it, writing the song to deal with his problems of focusing on life by expanding his scope to include death and what comes afterward.

Jason Mraz: I’m Yours

The song is about generosity, about giving yourself or your time to someone or something else. The first two-and-a-half minutes have so little production you could almost classify it as spoken word. Yet it’s rhythmic and melodic at the same time.

It is exactly the easy listening, happy-go-lucky space that this song puts you in, celebrating love for the feeling that it is.

Radiohead: All I Need

One of the band’s most direct love songs, All I Need is a downbeat track which sees frontman Thom Yorke singing of obsession and unrequited love. Yorke’s lyrics incorporate metaphors describing himself as “an animal trapped in your hot car”. In the final crescendo, the album’s “most cathartic release”, Yorke sings “it’s all right, it’s all wrong” as drummer Philip Selway’s crash cymbals enter.

John Mayer: My Stupid Mouth The Telegraph file picture

John Mayer: My Stupid Mouth

John Mayer has a unique way of converting his personal experiences into simple and catchy tunes offering unique perspectives and almost a methodical deconstruction of an event that in most cases go unseen. That, coupled with intricate and dazzling fretwork with elements of jazz, blues, rock and pop incorporated in the track My Stupid Mouth goes on to describe a modern dating situation where Murphy’s Law is at work.

Usually in times like these we tend to sympathise for the one who has to endure such a cringe-worthy circumstance and seldom do we think about the guilty party. Mayer offers a distinctive point of view of all the thoughts that goes through his head — “I’m never speaking up again/ It only hurts me/ I’d rather be a mystery/ Than she desert me”.