100 Most Popular Love Songs by Gen X

Ranked from 1 to 100 based on Spotify listens

Dec 28, 2024

The topline results aren’t too surprising: seven songs by Coldplay, five by Mariah Carey, and four each by Norah Jones, Maroon 5, John Mayer, and Train — followed by three each from Backstreet Boys, Bon Jovi, Michael Buble, Celine Dion, Guns N’ Roses, Whitney Houston, Jason Mraz, and Justin Timberlake.

I haven’t listed or even mentioned the love songs of any previous generation and wasn’t planning to do so for my generation. And in my pieces in January analyzing Gen X culture, I won’t be writing about love songs.

But two of my friends taunted me to create this list. And they kept taunting me till I could no longer resist the challenge.

Here’s how I did it:

First, I needed a definition. What is a love song? I decided that a love song is a song that helps two people build a lasting intimate relationship.

These songs have been written and / or performed by musicians or bands born between 1960 and 1979. (If you were born between 1960 and 1964, keep on choosing your generational membership as a Boomer or an Xer. I consider you to be the leading edge of Gen X.)

I looked at about 700 songs, if you can believe it. I looked at the birthyears of the musicians and made sure they were born in the 1960s or 1970s.

Some songs are collaborations between Xers and Boomers or Xers and Millennials. Admittedly, the number one song on this list is a collaboration between Xers (Coldplay) and a Millennial band (and will reappear when I look at music by Millennials). When this happened, I focused primarily on the singer.

Next, I looked at the lyrics for about 500 songs, and excluded all the songs that were sleazy or too explicit or negative or that were breakup songs (except Whitney Houston’s unavoidable and love-affirming one) or songs looking back at a relationship that had ended.

Now I had about 250 songs.

Next, I looked up how many listens each song had gotten on Spotify. All of these songs have gotten at least 240 million listens on Spotify.

(Well, almost all. For a few of these, the number wasn’t available cuz the song wasn’t one of the musician’s or band’s top ten songs. So I worked from the number of views of the song on YouTube and did my best to arrive at a proportional number.)

I cut the songs with fewer than 240 million listens on Spotify. And arrived at the most popular 100.

Then I put them in order from most-listened to least-listened to. First on Spotify, then on YouTube and in the list below.

So these are the Top 100 love songs by Gen X bands and other musicians, as determined by Spotify listeners.

If you’re on Spotify, the playlist is here.

On YouTube, the playlist is here.

Enjoy,

Mike

Stories for a New Florence

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