Our Valentine to You
A Valentine's Day listening note. Songs that carry something worth passing on.
Every February a certain strain of music listening turns sentimental, and there is no avoiding it and no particular reason to try.
The Valentine's Day listening note is a small tradition at this site. The version for 2009 is a loose collection of songs that have the quality of being given rather than kept. Songs that make more sense as something passed from one person to another than as something listened to alone.
The shape of it
The note is not structured as a formal playlist. It is a description of a mood and a few songs that fit it.
The Valentine tradition in American roots music runs older and stranger than the greeting card version. There are old-time songs about love that do not resolve into happiness. There are country songs about Valentine's Day that are really about absence. The formal occasion becomes the container for something more complicated.
This note sits in that space: songs that take the occasion seriously without taking the easy route.
What is in it
A few ballads from the country and folk tradition. One song from a contemporary artist whose work carries the weight of the older forms. One instrumental piece that does not need words.
The sequence moves from darker to lighter without resolving into brightness. It ends on a note that is warm rather than celebratory. That is the right place to end.
The full Mixtapes index: Mixtapes. The earlier Valentine note from 2008: Our Valentine to You, 2008.