The Perfect Valentine’s Day Playlist! (Assuming You Hate Valentine’s Day)

Sure, you could spend Valentine’s Day with your old standby: Celine Dion’s All the Way… A Decade of Song. But that never seems to take the edge off, does it? Instead, we’ve compiled our favorite ridiculous/ironic/not-so-loving songs to celebrate the birth of St. Valentine. Or, whatever.

From the classics (Frank Sinatra), to a song that for some reason Julie Andrews is convinced belongs on a Christmas CD, to modern Broadway hits (Avenue Q and Passing Strange), we have a wide variety of music for you to listen to while eating ice cream alone.

Since you’re so busy manning the door for deliveries of roses and Edible Arrangements from your roommate’s many suitors, we’ve done the hard work for you and created a short and sweet list of 12 songs, spanning a full range of emotions. (Some of these songs may not be safe for work. Or children.)

1. “My Funny Valentine” (Babes in Arms)
– Starting with the classics, nothing says “Our love is eternal” like the phrase “Your looks are laughable,/ unphotographable.” Thanks, Lorenz Hart.

2. “My Girlfriend Who Lives in Canada” (Avenue Q)
– We call Catfish! We’re pretty sure there’s no girlfriend in Canada, so don’t let Avenue Q‘s Rod Manti Te’o you.

3. “Falling in Love with Love” (Boys From Syracuse/TV’s Cinderella)
– Bernadette Peters introduced many of us to this song in the 1997 Brandy-vehicle Cinderella, when she sang it as a reminder to her daughters that it isn’t about love, it’s about marriage. Lorenz Hart does it again with lyrics like “Caring too much in such a juvenile fancy/, learning to trust is just for children in school.”

4. “Barcelona” (Company)
– We struggled with including “everything written by Stephen Sondheim” on this list, but that would be a cop-out. So we threw a dart at our Sondheim song dartboard and ended up with this awkward (read: post-coital?) duet between Bobby and April.

5. “Still Hurting” (The Last Five Years)
-We had to include at least one depressing song about how it sucks to be single, and nobody, we mean nobody hates being single more than Cathy of The Last Five Years. So take this moment to get it all out. “…where can I turn?/ Covered with scars I did nothing to earn?/ …I’m Still Hurting.”

6. “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair” (South Pacific)
– Nobody understands you like Nellie Forbush (in the voice of Rodgers and Hammerstein.) You just want to throw away all their stuff and pretend it never happened. “Show him what the door is for,/ rub him out of the roll call, /and drum him out of your dreams”

7. “Could I Leave You?” (Follies)
– Phyllis shows Ben how she really feels about their loveless marriage in another perfectly scornful Sondheim classic. (Alternate #7- the entirety of Follies) Listening to the lyrics of this song is the second best thing to sending Jan Maxwell to tell someone off in person.

8. “A Hymn to Him” (My Fair Lady)
“Women are irrational, that’s all there is to that!…Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” Male superiority is a common trend in old-school musical theater. Just think about South Pacific (“There Is Nothing like a Dame”) or Annie Get Your Gun (“You Can’t Get a Man with a Gun”). And in this song, Henry Higgins wants all women to be just like him. Which is definitely a good idea, right?

9. “It Takes a Woman” (Hello, Dolly!)

What’s Valentine’s Day without a little hardcore misogyny? This song goes a step beyond our choice from My Fair Lady and just says that women should “clean out the drain in the sink” and “shovel the ice,” all while “powdered and pink.”

10. “One Hundred Easy Ways to Lose a Man” (Wonderful Town)
Think you have a yen for repelling romance? Then take a page from Ruth’s book (literally) and turn your expertise into literary gold with your own list of love antidotes. After all, self-help books are big sellers these days.

12/13. Bonus Mashup “Two Ladies” (Cabaret)/ “We Just Had Sex” (Passing Strange)

But wait, there’s more! With your non-purchase of TheaterMania’s 10 song anti-Valentine’s Day playlist, you’ll also get a sexy “Two Ladies”/ “We Just Had Sex” double feature. These two songs will definitely get you in the mood to put the tub of ice cream back in the dryer, pull on your favorite tube top, and start chatting up the hotties at your nearest singles mixer.

We’ve compiled a Spotify playlist as well, for all the songs in one place: