Valentine's #1 Songs: A Chart

Having once had the awkward experience of trying to converse with a boy I liked while Rod Stewart's “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy”* played overhead, enumerating (frankly and clearly, to disco accompaniment) the concerns then foremost in my mind, I often wonder about the impact a particular song arbitrarily broadcast into a person’s life can have. In my case, I learned that it's hard to keep up a conversation about impending weather conditions while "just reach out and touuuuuuch me" is in the air, too.

On this chart are all the songs that happened to be #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 on Valentine’s Day over the last 33 years. Perhaps these songs contributed positively or adversely to a life-in-progress on this particular day—a day on which people naturally tend to be more noticeably inclined to feel happy or unhappy with love. So in 1997, if you were having a terrible time in a relationship, you were likely to have some consolation in Toni Braxon's "Un-break My Heart" coming on the radio to keep you company. The following year, though, if things had turned around (and I hope they did!), then Usher's "Nice & Slow" was there for you.

Judging which songs were more or less likely to be appreciated by those happy-in-love vs. those unhappy-in-love necessitated such enjoyable deliberations as, wait, does being unhappy-in-love let you greater appreciate people wanting to touch your junk, junk? I also discovered that I did in fact want to think that unhappy-in-love people might find solace in knowing that someone out in the world was blessing the rains down in Africa, and that there was nothing a hundred men or more could do about it.

*Rod Stewart’s “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” was actually a Billboard Hot 100 #1 over Valentine’s Day in 1979 (although the conversation I describe happened many years later).

Kate Stender writes a blog in which she attempts to figure out what the pronouns in song titles stand for.