“Love” Is Fading from Song Titles, 1959–2025
Topic: Culture & Entertainment
In this chart: The year's top 20 hits, Second Layer
About this chart
Each column holds the year's 20 biggest US songs as 20 dots; a rose dot is a song with "love" in its title. The readout gives that year's count and the share for the decade so far; the high is marked. Point at any year, or tap it, to read its numbers. The animation draws the years from 1959 to 2025 over fifty-six seconds, holds on the last year for three seconds, and loops. The scrubber under the chart marks each year and pauses on any of them.
Method
The songs are the top 20 of Billboard's year-end Hot 100 for every year from 1959 to 2025, 1,340 songs, as the chart is reproduced on Wikipedia's “Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles” pages; a year-end chart covers Billboard's chart year, which does not match the calendar year exactly. The details of each song were compiled for DataSlapper from Wikipedia's song and artist pages, SongBPM and other song pages, with a cited page for every value, and checked by DataSlapper: every year's top 20 against Wikipedia's page, and a random sample of 112 songs against the pages cited. A value no source gave is left out, not guessed; a double-sided single that holds one chart position counts as one song.
A title counts when one of its words begins with “lov”: love, loves, loved, lover, lovers, lovin', loving, and one “Lovely”, in 1965. Each year's column has 20 dots, one for each song; the lit dots count that year's titles and are stacked from the bottom, not placed by chart position. The readout's share counts the decade so far, the 1960s from 1959.
Data sources
- Billboard Year-End Hot 100 singles, 1959–2025, the top 20 of each year, as reproduced by Wikipedia
- Song titles: Wikipedia's song and artist pages, compiled for DataSlapper
Data table
Each year's 20 biggest US songs from 1959 to 2025: how many have "love" in the title, and their chart positions. Compiled by DataSlapper.
Show all 67 rows
| Year | Songs | With “love” | Share | Chart positions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1959 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 6 |
| 1960 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 1961 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 14 16 |
| 1962 | 20 | 3 | 15.0% | 2 4 19 |
| 1963 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 11 15 |
| 1964 | 20 | 5 | 25.0% | 2 6 10 14 19 |
| 1965 | 20 | 3 | 15.0% | 5 19 20 |
| 1966 | 20 | 3 | 15.0% | 11 13 20 |
| 1967 | 20 | 3 | 15.0% | 1 14 20 |
| 1968 | 20 | 4 | 20.0% | 2 6 7 14 |
| 1969 | 20 | 3 | 15.0% | 8 15 20 |
| 1970 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 16 |
| 1971 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 1972 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 16 |
| 1973 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 5 |
| 1974 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 3 4 |
| 1975 | 20 | 4 | 20.0% | 1 13 14 19 |
| 1976 | 20 | 5 | 25.0% | 1 7 8 9 15 |
| 1977 | 20 | 5 | 25.0% | 3 4 8 10 17 |
| 1978 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 6 8 |
| 1979 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 13 17 |
| 1980 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 6 15 |
| 1981 | 20 | 5 | 25.0% | 2 8 10 16 20 |
| 1982 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 3 11 |
| 1983 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 1984 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 2 18 |
| 1985 | 20 | 3 | 15.0% | 4 12 15 |
| 1986 | 20 | 6 | 30.0% | 10 11 12 13 14 20 |
| 1987 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 4 16 |
| 1988 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 17 20 |
| 1989 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 9 |
| 1990 | 20 | 4 | 20.0% | 2 6 9 16 |
| 1991 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 12 19 |
| 1992 | 20 | 3 | 15.0% | 7 9 11 |
| 1993 | 20 | 5 | 25.0% | 1 3 4 7 17 |
| 1994 | 20 | 4 | 20.0% | 3 4 8 18 |
| 1995 | 20 | 2 | 10.0% | 15 16 |
| 1996 | 20 | 4 | 20.0% | 3 8 17 20 |
| 1997 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 7 |
| 1998 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 1999 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 12 |
| 2000 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 7 |
| 2001 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 2002 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 19 |
| 2003 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 4 |
| 2004 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 4 |
| 2005 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 3 |
| 2006 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 2007 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 8 |
| 2008 | 20 | 3 | 15.0% | 2 7 8 |
| 2009 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 5 |
| 2010 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 7 |
| 2011 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 16 |
| 2012 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 8 |
| 2013 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 2014 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 2015 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 13 |
| 2016 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 1 |
| 2017 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 2018 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 19 |
| 2019 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 2020 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 10 |
| 2021 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 2022 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 2023 | 20 | 0 | 0.0% | |
| 2024 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 5 |
| 2025 | 20 | 1 | 5.0% | 11 |
Updated 2025
Embed this
<iframe src="https://dataslapper.com/viz/love-is-fading-from-song-titles.html" width="960" height="600" style="border:0;max-width:100%" title="“Love” Is Fading from Song Titles, 1959–2025" loading="lazy"></iframe>Paste this on any page. The visualization is self-contained and loads from dataslapper.com.