Harvard scholars pick the love songs that changed how they understand love

What makes a love song actually work? Not the sentiment alone — plenty of songs declare devotion without saying anything true. The ones that stick are the ones that capture something real about how love actually feels: the choice it requires, the persistence it demands, the doubt woven through the certainty.

Harvard faculty were asked to name their favorite love songs, and their picks reveal something interesting. They didn't all choose the obvious declarations. Some chose goodbye songs. Some chose songs about uncertainty. All of them chose songs that seemed to understand love as something more complex than the greeting-card version.

The songs that shaped how they love

Quinn White, an assistant professor of philosophy, and his wife chose "I Choose You" by The SteelDrivers for their wedding. The 2020 song captures something White values: the idea that love isn't something that happens to you, but something you actively do. "Love is something that we do, and it is the product of our agency," he says — both in building a relationship and in truly seeing another person. That framing — love as a verb, not just a feeling — changed how he thinks about commitment.

George Aumoithe, who teaches history and African American studies, picked "I Feel Love" by Donna Summer. Released in 1977, it's pure disco optimism, built on a futuristic synthesizer sound that still sounds ahead of its time. Aumoithe appreciates it not as a ballad but as a moment in music history — the song marked disco's peak and pointed toward synth-pop. Sometimes a love song works because it captures the energy of an entire era.

Katelyn Hearfield, a postdoctoral fellow in theater and dance, chose Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You." Here's the twist: Dolly Parton wrote it as a goodbye to her mentor, not a love declaration. But Houston's vocal — lush, powerful, layered with strings — transformed it into something that feels unmistakably romantic. The arrangement did the work that the lyrics alone couldn't.

Andrew Clark, who directs Harvard's choral activities, loves the duet "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" — Aretha Franklin and George Michael together, 1986. An unlikely pairing, but the song has what Clark calls "a feeling of persistence and inevitability that nothing can stop you from finding your love." There's something about two voices committing to the same idea that makes the idea feel unstoppable.

Richard Thomas, a classics professor, chose Bob Dylan's "Boots of Spanish Leather" from 1964. It's a song about uncertainty and distance, not a declaration. Thomas sees it as a "real love song" because it captures what love actually includes: doubt, the possibility of loss, the human complexity that greeting cards skip. Dylan's poetry gets at something true about what it means to be human and in love.

David Deming, dean of Harvard College, picked Stevie Wonder's "You Are the Sunshine of My Life" — a song that was played at his own wedding. Wonder, he says, is the "unquestioned king of love songs" because he knows how to build a song that's both catchy and meaningful, memorable and genuine.

What's striking about these choices is that they're not all the same kind of love. Some are about choosing, some about persistence, some about doubt, some about joy. But they all seem to recognize that love songs work best when they're honest about what love actually is: complicated, active, uncertain, and worth choosing anyway.