Songs and the City

Valentine's mixtape: Love songs for your loved one

Dean and Britta's "Back Numbers"
Jens Lekman
Yo La Tengo's "And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out"
Kurt Wagner of Lampchop
Nick Drake

I've been wracking my brain trying to determine the best Valentine's Day theme for this installment of "Songs and the City."

Should I highlight twisted love songs that find curious ways to express devotion (i.e. "She's Like Heroin to Me" by the Gun Club)?

Or should I focus on songs of heartbreak and misery as a shout-out to the millions of people who despise the Hallmark holiday: The single and the spurned? Tracks like "We'll Burn Together" by Robbie Fulks and "Better Off Without a Wife" by Tom Waits would be perfect for such an anti-Valentine's list.

Or should I gather together a handful of my favorite love songs as the ultimate mixtape for googly-eyed lovebirds like myself?

Since I'm feeling particularly warm and giddy this unusually cold February, I decided that I'd compile the latter, a heartwarming collection of musical tributes to love.

"Breathless" by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

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Not known as somebody who usually sings about anything positive, much less love (and, no, murderous obsession does not count), Nick Cave pulls out all the stops with the glorious "Breathless," a song that skips along with lovesick abandon. The flutes flutter about like the butterflies you feel when your sweetheart enters the room. "The happy hooded bluebells bow/And bend their heads all a-down/Heavied by the early morning dew/At the whispering stream, at the bubbling brook/The fishes leap up to take a look/For they are breathless over you."

"You Are the Light" by Jens Lekman

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The Swedish pop svengali delivers a first class cheeky ode to love with "You Are the Light," a song with a priceless opening line: "Yeah I got busted so I used my one phone call to dedicate a song to you on the radio." Talk about devotion! The punchy horns and lilting melody are pure pop confection. This is love that's sticky sweet and dance-inducing.

"Valentine's Day" by Hem

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Springsteen's unheralded gem from 1987 is given a brilliant treatment by the New York chamber-pop group, Hem. The lyrics are vintage Boss, a lonely highway journey back to the loving grasp of his true love: "I'm driving a big lazy car rushin' up the highway in the dark/I got one hand steady on the wheel and one hand's tremblin' over my heart/It's pounding baby like it's gonna bust right on through/And it ain't gonna stop till I'm alone again with you." While Springsteen's original is surely a winner, I'm partial to the pristine vocals of Sally Ellyson and the weepy pedal steel on Hem's stunning remake. It's a rare case where a Springsteen track is bested by another artist.

"You're 39, You're Beautiful and You're Mine" by Paul Kelly

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I can't wait for my wife to turn 39, if for no other reason than to be able to play this song for her over a full year and have the message be completely accurate. The piano line makes me swoon and the lyrics are a thing of simple beauty. For all you guys that are hesitant to openly share your feelings, this track's for you. Turn it up, grab your baby and lead her on a living room waltz she's not likely to forget.

"Our Way to Fall" by Yo La Tengo

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A true story about the budding romance between Yo La Tengo's lead singer Ira Kaplan and his soon-to-be wife (and the band's drummer) Georgia Hubley, "Our Way to Fall" perfectly captures the vulnerability, uncertainty and awkward giddiness that accompanies a new crush. Ira's hushed delivery, the brushed cymbals, woozy keyboards, Georgia's subtle backing vocals, and the languid tempo mesh with the lyrics to make this one of the sweetest love songs ever.

"I Believe in You" by Lambchop

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Kurt Wagner of Lambchop has earned heaps of praise and a cult following for his mumbling and muttering vocal style, but his message of love comes through as clear as a bell in his winning take on Don Williams' 1980 hit. After reeling off a litany of things he doesn't believe in (the price of gold, organic food, superstars, the certainty of growing old, to name a few) Wagner arrives at the chorus and professes what he does believe in: "But I believe in love/I believe in music/I believe in magic/And I believe in you." Enough said.

"If You Need Someone" by The Field Mice

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Boasting an infectious Smiths guitar jangle and a sweet bouncy melody, "If You Need Someone" should have been a late '80s hit, or at least included on a post-John Hughes romantic comedy soundtrack. It overflows with "aw-shucks" romanticism, but its elegant grandeur keeps it from coming across as to "twee" or treacly.

"You Turned My Head Around" by Dean & Britta

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For all of you who found your true love at a point in your life when things were looking down and you were feeling lower than low, you'll be able to identify with this timeless track. An elegant, wispy interpretation of a 1969 Lee Hazlewood song (originally sung by Ann Margaret), it finds Britta Phillips (the former voice of cartoon's Jem) soaring to the heavens as she proclaims how the arrival of her baby lifted her out of her doldrums: "I told myself I'd never feel again/I said I'd never care what's real, but then... you turned my head around."

"I Had to Tell You" by 13th Floor Elevators

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Even after countless listens, the power of this track is never diminished. It's about how love can give you strength even in the darkest of times. Read through a sample lyric and then let Roky Erickson take you away with his hauntingly fragile performance: "Chaos all around me/with its finger clinging/but I can hear you singing/in the corners of my brain/Every doubt has found me/Every sound grows drier/Everything is quiet/But the song that keeps me sane/I can hear your voice/echo in my voice softly/I can feel your strength/reinforcing mine."

"So In Love" by Curtis Mayfield

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Sultry, sexy, soulful. Words like these can't even begin to describe the wonder of this 1975 cut by the legendary Curtis Mayfield. He's one of those rare artists (along with Marvin Gaye) who's equally adept at slinging stinging social commentary one minute and exuding spine-tingling sensuality the next, often on the same album side. This talent has enabled Mayfield to lay down some of the greatest soul music ever put to wax.

"Northern Sky" by Nick Drake

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This track from Nick Drake's masterpiece "Bryter Layter" never fails to give me goosebumps. Described by NME as the "greatest English love song of modern times," "Northern Sky" features Drake's achingly beautiful voice combined with a sweeping orchestral arrangement and an expert guest turn by the Velvet Underground's John Cale on piano, organ and celesta. "I never felt magic crazy as this," Drake sings to open the song, and every time I hear it I couldn't agree with him more.

"You You You You You" by The 6ths (featuring Katharine Whalen)

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The 6ths is one of the many side projects of Magnetic Field's Stephin Merritt, an immensely gifted songwriter who follows in the footsteps of golden age craftsmen like Cole Porter, the Gershwins, and Lerner and Loewe. Granted, his lyrical approach is updated for the 21st century, but his songs beam with the same classic grace and sophistication of the giants who came before him. On "You You You You You" he recruits Squirrel Nut Zipper Katharine Whalen to deliver a delicious ode to love that's impossible to resist: "You make me feel like I'm seventeen again/You make everything beautiful seem true/I can't wait to go to sleep and dream again/'cause every dream I dream is a dream of dreamy little you."

cult classic

Performer John Cameron Mitchell celebrate 25 years of Hedwig at Houston show

Hedwig and the Angry Inch movie still

Courtesy of John Cameron Mitchell

Hedwin and the Angry Inch will celebrate its 25th anniversary in 2026.

Next year will mark the 25th anniversary of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, the 2001 cult queer musical and directorial debut of veteran stage actor John Cameron Mitchell. First debuting in Sundance before hitting theaters later that summer, Hedwig (based on the 1998 off-Broadway play Mitchell co-wrote and starred in) became a favorite for those who like their rock musicals anarchic and androgynous.

Mitchell will be celebrating Hedwig’s anniversary early – right here in Houston. This Sunday, December 28, the film will be shown at legendary Montrose club Numbers, and Mitchell will be there for a live director’s commentary and a post-screening live performance. The screening is one part of a day-long event for Mitchell, who will be teaching a sold-out master class at Cafe Brasil later that day.

Local nonprofit Arthouse Houston reached out to Mitchell about revisiting Hedwig in H-Town. “I got good buddies from there,” the El Paso-born military brat, 62, tells CultureMap during a Zoom call from his New Orleans home. “My friend Amber Martin, who's from the area and who I’ve sung and DJed with for many, many years, is coming – especially for this. She used to go to Numbers as a kid. My friend Jonathan Caouette, who directed the film Tarnation, lives there. He used to go to Visions in the '80s. So, it's kind of fun to come to an old, classic club and show the film, do some songs, hang around, and do a drunk live director's commentary – or maybe stoned, depending on my feelings that day.”

John Cameron Mitchell will perform at Numbers this Sunday, December 28.Courtesy of John Cameron Mitchell

For Mitchell, revisiting Hedwig takes him back to a simpler time, when an actor/playwright could get a film about a gay, East German rocker whose signature song is about his botched sex reassignment surgery (now you know where “angry inch” comes from) financed and distributed by a major studio. Even though Hedwig flopped in theaters, it would eventually gain a cult following. Mitchell would follow it up with an even more provocative film, the 2005 ensemble comedy Shortbus, which featured actors engaging in graphic, unsimulated sex.

“That was the last golden age of independent film in the U.S.,” he says. “It was the '90s and 2000s, which pretty much ended at the financial collapse of 2006, which coincided with the rise of the streamers, which really put the final nail in the coffin for independent film as we know it in terms of it being a viable commercial thing. So, a lot of people made fewer films. They had to have more stars. They had to have more Oscar gloss. And the habit of going to see the best-reviewed film that week just because the critics were telling you went away, of course.”

MItchell still does the acting thing from time-to-time – in February, he’ll take over as Mary Todd Lincoln in Cole Escola’s Broadway drag hit Oh Mary!. But, these days, he;s been teaching master classes and film courses at various colleges (like his “Problemagic Cinema” course at the University of Michigan).

Along with teaching them film history, he encourages his students to take things – whether it’s a film they want to make or a movement they want to start – in their own hands. “I'm telling my students it's like this: now is the time to create a new kind of underground film, and other things,” he says. “The big question, of course, is how do you get them out there? How do you monetize them so there can be more? I can't quite answer that, but I also know that when corporations abandon a certain form, that's the time to step up and take it back.”

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