[Mini-Feature] Best Love & Anti-Love Songs

Whether you love everything about Valentine's Day or loathe it, it's hard to escape what the holiday has become in our culture. In honor of your love or hate for Valentine's Day, Life in Boxes presents our picks for the best love and anti-love songs. You pick what you feel like listening to on this day (or any other day).

Jen's Picks:

Best Love Song:
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps
Probably not a typical love song, but singer Karen O's pleas of Wait! /They don't love you like I do is desperate and heartbreaking. Anyone who has had to say goodbye to someone they love can relate to this song.

Best Anti-Love Song:
Kate Nash - Foundations
My favorite song at the moment, Foundations is super catchy and Nash is a fantastic storyteller. It's about being stuck in a relationship and not being able to get out of it- My fingertips are holding onto the cracks in our foundation / and I know that I should let go but I can't. Usually in songs like this the person realizes he/she's with the other one because of some redeeming quality; there's none here. This is an anti-love song at its finest.

Jorge's Picks:

Best Love Song:
Yellow - Coldplay
There's hardly a wrong answer to this. Love is not simple so depending on the situation there is a song for it. Like Maps, Yellow has the tempo and rifts that mirror heartbeats. While Maps struggles with saying goodbye, Yellow makes saying hello to your significant other feel new every time.

Best Anti-Love Song:
The Weakerthans - Left and Leaving
Wait for the year to drown / Spring forward, fall back down / I'm trying not to wonder where you are. A beautifully written song that cuts through you like a verbal scalpel. A sobering reminder that love ain't always grand.


Julia's Picks:

Best Love Song:
Simple, Starving To Be Safe - Daphne Loves Derby
Time for a double-header. Just to reiterate, I love DLD. This is the first song of theirs that I fell in love with, with it's simplistic lyrics about being in love with someone - before any sort of complications get involved: Oh, how can I survive without your love, and the hope you bring?/Oh, even when the world is breaking down/I know I have you, and that's all I need. Never has a song captured the simplistic nature of young love, with a simple strum of the guitar.

Best Anti-Love Song:
Hopeless Love - Daphne Loves Derby
The title says it all. We've all been there, thinking the same things: Hopeless love, why did you carve your home in me?/This broken heart is too weak to hold your weight/And how I regret the day we met/Help me forget your name. You said it, Kenny.

Yuri's Picks:

Best Love Song:
Such Great Heights - The Postal Service
This is the type of song that you think about immediately after you find someone that you really, really like because you think that everything between you two are perfect. So you really believe the lyrics, And I have to speculate that God himself / Did make us into corresponding shapes like / Puzzle pieces from the clay. Ah, young love.

Best Anti-Love Song:
Song Cry - Jay-Z
Jay-Z gets deep with this song about love lost. It may seem like he's just really sad, but when he says, I can't see it coming down my eyes / so I gotta make this song cry, you realize that he's probably just as confused as he is depressed.