A love song is about falling in love and the happiness it brings. By contrast, a heartbreak song is about a relationship breaking down, or the sadness of a love that has died. Anthologies of love songs often contain a mixture of both of these types of song. A bawdy song is both humorous and saucy, emphasizing the physical pleasure of love rather than the emotional joy. Notable performers of love songs include Paul McCartney, Elton John, Bryan Adams, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Phil Collins, George Michael, Whitney Houston, Taylor Swift, and Billy Joel.
Many love songs are addressed directly to the person being admired. This means that a girl's name often appears in the title. Some well-known examples are "Maria" (from "West Side Story"), "Amanda" (Boston), "Michelle" (The Beatles), "Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair" (Stephen Foster) and "Layla" (Derek and the Dominos, although the girl to which the music refers to is Pattie Boyd). It seems that songs sung from the girls point of view, with a man's name in the title, are less frequent. In 1964 Cilla Black had a hit with "You're MY World". Unusually, the song does not specify the sex of the singer. In the same year it was a hit for Harry Secombe. He did not need to change any of the words to make it refer to a man's love of a woman. The Crystals had a hit with "Then He Kissed Me". It was a simple matter for the Beach Boys to change a few words, and this became "Then I Kissed Her", also a hit. Other examples of songs with girls names in the title are "Annie's Song" (John Denver), "Peggy Sue" (Buddy Holly), "Hey There Delilah" (Plain White T's) and "Sherry" (The Four Seasons).
Some historical or local names for a sweetheart often appear in the title. For example "My Old Dutch" (Albert Chevalier) contains the cockney rhyming slang word "Dutch" = "Duchess of Fife" = "Wife". Robert Burns' "John Anderson, My Jo" has the word "Jo" (18th century word for a sweetheart). Love songs in the first person are quite rare before the middle of the nineteenth century, but it is not known why this should be.
Changes in style mean that few songs survive more than fifty years, but there are exceptions. Al Jolson had a hit with "You Made Me Love You (I Didn't Want to Do It)". It is better known in the film version by Judy Garland. "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" (Friedman, Whitson) dates from 1910, and is still quite familiar. "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby" (McHugh, Fields) has become a jazz standard. Cole Porter wrote many witty love songs. The best known one is possibly "I've Got You Under My Skin (song)". "You're Driving Me Crazy" (Walter Donaldson) has the jaunty feel of the 1920s, and is almost synonymous with Americans dancing the Charleston. Other songs that have survived from the 1920s included "The Very Thought of You" (Ray Noble), "All of Me (song)" (Marks, Simmons) and the country and western song "Confessin'" (Daugherty, Neiberg, Reynolds).
There have been fewer easy listening singers since the 1980s. Hits include "Hello" (Lionel Richie), "I Know Him So Well" (Rice, Andersson, Ulvaeus) and "Nothing Compares 2 U" (Prince/Sinéad O'Connor). Kenny Rogers, who is famous for recording many love songs, had some of his biggest hits in the 1980s with "Through the Years", "You Decorated My Life" and "Lady". In 1989, The Cure's greatest hit "Lovesong" reached number 2 in USA. From the 1990s we have Bryan Adams' "Everything I Do", "Iris" by The Goo Goo Dolls or "Truly Madly Deeply" by Australian band Savage Garden. SWV made their signature song "Weak" in 1992. During the boy band boom of the 90s, bands like Take That and Boyzone had hits with such songs.