1972: The Spinners: "I'll Be Around." Love is gracious: not only does Phillipe Wynne promise to stay friends with his ex, he even cops to an ongoing attraction to her without sounding like a manipulative jerk.

1973: Marvin Gaye: "Let's Get It On." You were expecting maybe "You Sure Love to Ball"?

1974: Ken Boothe: "Everything I Own." Love is transfiguring. Take this cover of Bread's dippy soft-rock original, which is made over into rock-solid reggae soul: the lithe arrangement opens the door, and Boothe's disarmingly sincere vocal brings you all the way in. A No. 1 hit in England that might have done as well in America had it been released here.

1975: 10cc: "I'm Not in Love." A cushion of sound with a shockingly hard center: the guy's a total prick ("Don't tell your friends about the two of us"? Yeah, stuff it, control freak), but the music exposes every word as a lie.

1976: Diana Ross: "Love Hangover." Disco was derided as mechanical, and once the beat kicks in you can set your watch to it, but the way Miss Ross hisses the lines "Don't call the preacher — no! — I don't need it" will deregulate your breathing in a hurry.

1977: Donna Summer: "I Feel Love." On second thought, maybe disco was mechanical — like this robotic maze of synthesizers and sequencers, over which Summer moans a grand total of eighteen words — and maybe that's exactly what's sexy about it.

1978: Buzzcocks: "Ever Fallen in Love." Opting to leave the state-smashing to the Sex Pistols and the Clash, the Buzzcocks instead discovered how effective punk rock was for gnashing out your personal problems. Here they gnashed so hard it was a wonder they had any teeth left when it was finished.

1979: Prince: "I Wanna Be Your Lover." The Minneapolis child prodigy's first euphoric burst, a saucily good humored come-on that climaxes with the blunt, "I wanna be the only one you come for." Cute calling card, the world thought; maybe he'll stick around. By 1980's Dirty Mind, a scant year later, he'd stop showing so much fucking propriety.

1980: George Jones: "He Stopped Loving Her Today." A true story: the first time I heard this greatest of all country records, I was so distracted by it I had to stop making out with the girl I was with until the song was finished. I don't know whether that makes me any better off than the poor fucker Possum's singing about, but there's no way I'm worse off, as most of the song takes place at a funeral — his.

1981: Taana Gardner: "Heartbeat." Love is relentless. So is this bassline, which digs the deepest groove in disco history. When New York DJ Larry Levan first heard this record, which he'd provide the definitive remix of, he played it at his club, the Paradise Garage, and cleared the floor. So he played something else, got the floor back—and kept putting it on again and again until his dancers got the message. Sampled by everyone from De La Soul to Bounty Killer, it's still a favorite two clubgoing generations later.

1982: Gregory Isaacs: "Night Nurse." In the year Marvin Gaye came back with "Sexual Healing," this mirror-image record emerged from Jamaica: bubbling synth lines, insinuating beats, totally assured begging that nobody but guys this smooth could possibly get away with. Both songs even involve nurses — Isaacs just put his in the song instead of the video. Weird.

1983: Loose Joints: "Tell You (Today)." Kitchen-sink disco, with cherry-sour horns, a whistled hook, and piano-led dynamic shifts that sound like a comet knocking down a telephone booth over a nervous, knuckle-hard groove. Brought to you by the late Arthur Russell, who'd worked with Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson, Ali Akbar Khan and Larry Levan, and sang the lyric like he was giving directions to a tourist.

1984: Thompson Twins: "Hold Me Now." "Warm my heart," these Limey fops moan — and then they do! Vocative speech lives!

1985: Chaba Fadela & Cheb Sahraoui: "N'sel Fik." Love and marriage go together like a house and fire, at least on this Algerian record — the Arab world's biggest hit of the mid-'80s. The title means "You Are Mine," and wife Fadela and husband Sahraoui aren't kidding — over a fierce rai groove, they're as devoted as Marvin & Tammi, and as eyeball-to-eyeball desperate as John & Exene.

1986: New Order: "Bizarre Love Triangle (Shep Pettibone Remix)." On the original, Bernard Sumner sings, "Every time I think of you/I feel a shock right through like a bolt of blue." Pettibone's remix illustrates that shock — only his quick edits and warm synth build-ups turn that shock every color of the spectrum.

1987: Guns N' Roses: "Sweet Child o' Mine." Claims that bloat got the better of them are exaggerated: they were bombastic even when they were lean and hungry. But at their best, their grandiosity was justified—sometimes big emotions demand big production, big guitar sounds, big vocals, all teetering on overkill, all staying on its right side.

1988: Lucinda Williams: "I Just Wanted to See You So Bad." Long before becoming the Starbucks Nation's agony aunt, Williams's cult was tiny but fierce. Twenty-seven perfect lines — twelve of which are repetitions of the title — add up to the most accurate song about a long-distance relationship ever written. The roadhouse-perfect guitar and organ licks that accompany them are a good indication why.

1989: De La Soul: "Eye Know." In a genre as brag-heavy as hip-hop, any artist confident enough to promise that "My peak of love for you is brought to an apex/Sex is a mere molecule" is clearly a catch. Not to mention they were quite possibly the first rappers to use the term "by golly gee."

1990: L.L. Cool J: "Around the Way Girl." Hip-hop's greatest personal ad: "I want a girl with extensions in her hair/Bamboo earrings, at least two pair/Fendi bag and a bad attitude/That's all I need to get me in a good mood." Well, that's not all, but you get the idea.

1991: Matthew Sweet: "Evangeline." Love is dorky. Actually, this song probably doesn't count: Sweet only thinks he loves Evangeline, and says so in the chorus. Mostly he just wants to fuck her. She's a comic book character. And he's a power-pop singer. Perfect.

1992: Baby D: "Let Me Be Your Fantasy." Love is cheesy, but nowhere as agreeably so than in this archetypal rave anthem.

1993: Bikini Kill: "Rebel Girl." "That girl thinks she's the queen of the neighborhood/I've got news for you/She is!" This was probably inspired by Joan Jett, so it's only fitting that of the three versions Bikini Kill recorded of their greatest song, the one I'm choosing (available on The Singles) is the one Jett herself provides guitar and backing vocals for.

1994: M People: "Excited." This perfectly constructed, utterly irresistible house music ode to sexual freedom, sung by deep-voiced Heather Small backed by a butch male chorus, pivots on the second verse: "So climb right on in/You know our love's not a sin/You can kiss all of me/'Cause you're my ecstasy." (She probably doesn't mean MDMA either.) Love is never having to say you're sorry, and reveling in it.

1995: James Carter: "You Never Told Me That You Care." The greatest of jazz's mid-'90s young lions purrs. He also moons, hollers, shows off, cajoles, plays real purty, swings slow, and makes every note count.

1996: Amy Rigby: "Beer & Kisses." Love is worth saving. Even if the couch you used to make out on is now where you sleep after yet another fight. The details are heartbreaking and the resolution hopeful — a rare combination. You'll root for them, even if you suspect it's too late.

1997: Yo La Tengo: "Autumn Sweater." The low hum of Converse-shod boys and girls: organ wash, fuzz-bomb bass, and the funkiest drumbeat in all of indie rock, complete with conga breaks. Ira Kaplan's murmur is so awestruck-devotional you'd be amazed if he and the drummer weren't married.

1998: Aaliyah: "Are You That Somebody?." The greatest record by the subtlest female R&B singer of her generation. But as fabulous as Aaliyah's performance is, this belongs to producer Timbaland, who pushed an already terrific song over the top with the most eccentric production to hit mainstream radio since approximately "I Am the Walrus." (Before he and Missy Elliott discovered Bollywood on "Get Ur Freak On," that is.)

1999: Armand Van Helden feat. Roland Clark: "Flowerz." An aural iris shot, focused through a red lens: limpid garage-house bassline, dewy guitars and strings, and Clark's love-struck falsetto, so wet it threatens to dissolve completely, so feverish it can give you tunnel vision.

2000: Future Bible Heroes: "I'm Lonely (And I Love It)." Stephin Merritt's definitive moment, an antiheartbreak anthem released a year after 69 Love Songs: "I'm as lonely as an eagle and I'm crazy as a loon/Who would ever think I could get over you so soon? . . . If that's how it feels to get your heart broken/Break my heart again."