The Ten Coolest Love Songs

Look, The Distractor is not completely without sentiment. These are the songs that bring out the inner romantic, that make your heart sing (from an admittedly white, middle-class male point of view), and all without a whiff of cheese or a wave of nausea. Perhaps other readers etc.

1. Maybe I'm Amazed - Paul McCartney. Lord knows the man's written some cloying shit in his time, but he managed this understated masterpiece just before he lost it forever. The sound of someone who's fallen in love despite themselves.
2. Wake Up And Make Love With Me - Ian Dury. Ode to early morning shagging, a definite highlight of blissful domesticity. Discrete, too - "What happens next is private... it's also very rude."
3. All My Little Words - The Magnetic Fields. Or it could just as easily be "Absolutely Cuckoo", or for that matter pretty much any one of the songs off the magnificent 99 Love Songs album.
4. I Believe (When I Fall In Love It Will Be Forever) - Stevie Wonder. Terrific soul anthem that gains added resonance by being the song played at the end of High Fidelity.
5. Baby You're My Light - Richard Hawley. Simple statement of fact from the underrated Sheffield crooner.
6. Good Fortune - PJ Harvey. I can't think of a better tune to conjure up images of walking the streets with your head in the clouds, reeling from the thunderbolt.
7. It Must Be Love - Madness. Pretty much nails the facts of love - "Soon as I wake up every night, every day, I knw that it's you I need to take my blues away." Although, just imagine how horrible it could be in the hands of, say, Celine Dion.
8. Don't Falter - Mint Royale featuring Lauren Laverne. A sweet little pop-dance gem, and certainly the best record ever made by a presenter of CD:UK.
9. You Were Right - Badly Drawn Boy. Touching portrait of a relationship, wherein a feckless, music-obsessed dreamer eulogises his practical, loving wife. I can sympathise with that.
10. In Pursuit Of Happiness - The Divine Comedy. Freewheeling expression of the pure joy of love - being "totally, quite uncontrollably happy", and pleasingly obscure enough to completely baffle all but two people at my wedding.