Love songs are one of the most storied traditions in the history of popular music. They can range from saccharine twee, to lavish R&B, to upbeat pop. However, this February it felt fitting to do something new. This year we shut the door on Elton John and The Beatles, and we turned a blind eye to Taylor Swift and Whitney Houston. In this playlist, love isn’t cute, nor is it sweet. Here, love is what lies at the bottom of Pandora’s box, the last bastion of humanity against the torrents of the apocalypse. Love will be heavy, love will spill from your headphones and pool around your feet, love will inscribe itself in stone with lightning. The following are 8 love songs for the end of the world.

         “The Pull” by the Microphones paints a portrait of a man abandoning the world to become one with nature. The song’s first half is the resignation of reality, a mournful folk song which constructs the isolating new world. However, his ascent is interrupted by another individual whose beauty threatens to draw the narrator back to Earth. Their introduction pauses the uniformly recurring chords and the world hangs in balance. Then the worlds collide. Love brings the narrator back, and each world is destroyed by one another through the arrival of this indescribable foreign entity. The folk song ends, and thunderous drums erupt from the silence. Guitar feedback and a ghostly voice push the audio to its limit, pulling apart its own seams. In “The Pull,” love is an apocalyptic rescue. It’s a force so powerful it annihilates the narrator’s prison of loneliness, and the song itself buckles under the pressure.

         The end of the world wouldn’t be complete without the post-apocalypse. “Dreams” by TV On The Radio is a love song assembled by the ashes of a ruined world. The song depicts a barren landscape, one shattered by a relationship gone sour. Tunde Adebimpe’s low vocals lament crushed dreams over hollow instrumentation, when suddenly, the hypnotic drawl is shattered by the blaring of a choir of siren-like synths. The song transforms from a lament to a fiery plea for love, one intent to rescue its world rather than wallow in its wreckage. Grief is drowned in impassioned appeals for change and forgiveness. Despite the ravaged world of “Dreams,” love not only persists, but ruptures through the muck for a post-apocalyptic digital scream to return love to where it belongs.

         Japandroids’ “House That Heaven Built” could be the last rock song that will ever be recorded. A blistering, deafening, electric fury of drums, guitar, and vocals, performed by a duo of bleeding hearts so large they threaten to drown themselves. Many love songs surround themselves in extravagant fluff of crooning vocals and oppressive strings, but Japandroids cut the fat for a stirring song driven by love and love only. David Prowse’s rapid, concussive drums support Brian King’s fiery guitar through a blistering 5 minutes. The love of the song is so intense, it can only be realized through the purest means of music. Despite the size of the band, there’s no space for silence, each gap is filled by explosive emotion. While loud and furious, Japandroid’s Hail Mary of finality is driven by a tender love.

         “Outro” from M83 is a romantic funeral march from 100 years in the future. It’s a symphonic reach to the heavens for a world on the brink of oblivion. While the lyrics forewarn impending doom, they close with a promise of devotion as the singer wails “I’m your king.” It’s with this covenant of love that the song plunges into its climax, a massive wash of sound composed of strings, synths, drums, and guitar. The band unites for one final battle cry, and they refuse to go quietly. As the song resigns to greater forces, it launches love to the battlefield. As it fades from its crushing orchestra, a lone piano closes the song with a simple coda, an end of the world where love managed to make it.

         Bruce Springsteen’s catalogue is rooted in a classic vision of America. In “Thunder Road,” he sets that world ablaze. American icons become ghosts of a decaying world, and Springsteen wants to escape it with the girl of his dreams. He promises to take her away from this world, to save her from the crumbling suburbia that entraps them, and she accepts. Together they flee, taking their naïve optimism on the road to the unknown. Yet their escape isn’t marked by fear; the E-Street band paves “Thunder Road” with uproarious hope for the young lovers. As they choose love, the old world fades in the rearview mirror and they soar on musical wings to embrace the new.

         Derek and the Dominos’ cover of “Little Wing” takes Hendrix’s trippy love song and implodes it, creating a cacophony of warring guitars. Little Wing seems to serve as the apex of love songs, stretching to the brink of collapse yet never diminishing. Duane Allman and Eric Clapton’s vocals howl above overlapping guitars, describing a woman who has shattered their preconceptions of love. The song explodes, and the vocals give way to dueling guitars and crashing cymbals. While the pieces of the song are strewn across its psychedelic landscape, its aching sense of passion forms an unbreakable connective tissue. It takes love and expands it across the universe, bending and screaming in a cosmic catharsis of unbridled feeling whose love feels familiar despite the scope.

         “I’ll Believe in Anything” is a sonic and emotional experience that truly feels like the weight of the earth is crashing on your shoulders. The sheer beauty of love is what propels this anthem to soaring heights of apocalyptic yearning. The song’s carnival synths and crushing drums bring love to its knees and Spencer Krug’s broken yells promise an escape. It’s an open hand in the midst of an explosion, wedding vows for the apocalypse, a testament to a love that could very well evade the end of the world. It’s devotion as action, emotion so powerful it shakes the earth, and while it’s just a song, for a moment it seems that we too can be taken where nobody knows us, and nobody gives a damn.

“Heroes” by David Bowie closes the playlist as a love song birthed from a hopeless reality. Bowie wrote “Heroes” during his stint in Berlin. It follows two lovers separated by the Berlin wall. Bowie’s song is underscored with a potent fear of death, a result of genuine unstable political circumstances. The instrumentation mimics planes flying overhead, keeping the song rooted in a scarily real sense of apocalypse. However, love soars above the constrictions of threatening geopolitics. While Bowie stares apocalypse in the face, love persists. It is wounded and it is unrealistic, but it’s the only thing they have left, and so it becomes everything. Like the last 7 songs, love doesn’t cause the end of the world, it survives it. It’s a power so strong it can resist the apocalypse, and despite the inevitable barrage of misery that comes with life, it prevails. If there’s anything this playlist seeks to prove, it’s that it always will.

Tracklist:

“The Pull” – The Microphones

“Dreams” – Tv On the Radio

“The House That Heaven Built” – Japandroids

“Outro” – M83

“Thunder Road” – Bruce Springsteen

“Little Wing” – Derek and the Dominos

“I’ll Believe in Anything” – Wolf Parade

“Heroes” – David Bowie