The 10 Love Songs I’m Playing on Repeat This Valentine’s Day Weekend

(Pippin)

by Chris Peterson

Valentine’s Day weekend always does this to me. Some people buy flowers, some people book overpriced prix fixe dinners, and some of us sit around ranking musical theatre love songs like it’s a competitive sport, and our emotional well-being depends on it.

So in the spirit of romance, longing, chaos, and people singing their feelings instead of going to therapy, here are some of my favorite love songs in musical theatre. Not the “objective best.” Not the most famous. Just the ones that live in my head rent-free and hit me square in the chest every single time.

“In Whatever Time We Have” (Children of Eden)

This is my number one because it’s love without glamour. It’s love with dirt under its fingernails. It’s two people in the middle of a complicated, messy life choosing each other anyway. The lyric is basically a thesis statement for grown-up love: we don’t get forever, we don’t get perfect, but we get now. And if that doesn’t hit you right in the chest, congratulations on your emotional stability, I guess.

“Lily’s Eyes” (The Secret Garden)

This is not a conventional “love duet,” which is exactly why it’s on my list. It’s love as memory, love as obsession, love as grief, love as myth. Two men singing about the same woman, seeing her differently, needing her differently, and somehow harmonizing anyway. The music does so much of the emotional work here. It’s gorgeous and haunted and weirdly intimate for a duet that’s technically about someone who isn’t even in the room.

“A Little Fall of Rain” (Les Misérables)

I’m not even going to pretend this doesn’t emotionally manipulate me every single time. It’s not a “big love story,” it’s not even a fair one, but it’s intimate in a way Les Mis rarely is. Two people in a moment that’s too small for the scale of the show, and yet it’s the moment that makes the whole thing feel human. It’s the musical theatre version of holding someone’s hand and trying to make time stop. Good luck not crying. I’m certainly not.

“Too Many Mornings” (Follies)

Now we’re getting into the love duets that don’t feel like love duets until you’re already bleeding. This is what happens when love stays in the room after the relationship has left. It’s not about falling in love, it’s about looking at someone you once built a life with and realizing you’re strangers now, and that the strangest part is you still know their rhythm. Sondheim didn’t write “romance,” he wrote emotional archaeology.

“Love Song” (Pippin)

This duet is disarmingly simple, and that’s exactly why it works. It’s not fireworks, it’s not grand declarations, it’s two people trying to figure out what love looks like in real time—hesitant, earnest, a little unsure, but fully open. For a show that spends so much time questioning meaning and performance, this number feels startlingly human. No spectacle, no mask, just connection.

“I’d Give It All for You” (Songs for a New World)

This is love after the fantasy. Love after mistakes. Love when real life has entered the chat and nobody gets to pretend anymore. What makes this duet land so hard is that it doesn’t chase perfect romance—it reaches for forgiveness, for partnership, for choosing each other even after disappointment. It’s messy, grounded, and deeply human, and that’s exactly why it hits like a truck.