Sometimes, there's a breakup song so good you wish you were in a relationship with someone so you could break up with him, then drive fast while singing at the top of your lungs.

I'm still a rock star

I got my rock moves

And I don't need you

And guess what?

I'm havin' more fun

And now that we're done

I'm gonna show you

We've all got our songs, from this Pink hit to the glory days of Motown. They're the ones we listen to while we're looking for love, the ones that hit us when someone caught our eye at a junior high dance, the ones we dance to in white gowns and tuxes, the ones we play loud to feel better about being alone.

We recently asked readers to share their stories about those songs. Today, Valentine's Day, we're sharing them. And in the spirit of full disclosure, a partial timeline of my own songs of love and hate.

* 1980: I slow dance with someone to Babe, by Styx. I can't remember the boy, but I remember the song.

* 1981: I'm introduced to Bruce Springsteen's album The River, and I realize I will forever worship the man who plays Drive All Night for me. Hasn't happened yet.

* 1985: My first real boyfriend. We're camp counselors, and we sneak away to a storage shed and slow dance to Journey's Open Arms. His choice of music is the first sign that this will not last.

* 1986: My boyfriend dumps me, and I spend a seven-hour Greyhound ride listening to a cassette of Madonna's Cherish, while sobbing to the poppiest pop song ever.

* 1989: Dumped again. Joni Mitchell's A Case of You is on a permanent loop on my jambox. Finally, my best friend calls: "Step away from the Joni Mitchell."

* 2003: Eamon writes a breakup song so perfectly angry that almost none of its lyrics can be printed here.

The chorus begins with an obscenity - "(blank) you, you (blank)", followed by "I don't want you back." Because there's no room for niceties when your heart has been broken.

'You Light Up My Life'

The year was 1978, senior prom no less, and the song we claimed as ours was You Light Up My Life. It was so easy being in love when we were just 18 . . . Thirty years later, after each of us married other people (several times), we still keep in touch and every letter, e-mail and phone message ends with Y.L.U.M.L.

It's a touching reminder to us of the sappy sweetness of true love.

And yes, her hubby Scott knows. 'Open Arms'

My most significant song (next to my husband's and my first dance song, the classic Our Love Is Here to Stay) has got to be Open Arms by Journey.

It was the fall of 1983; I was a sophomore at North High School. A group of us went out to dinner at Three Sons (back when it was located where Cafe Brazil is now, on 44th and Lowell) before the big homecoming dance. It was one of my first school dances, and I'd never been on a date before, much less had a proper slow dance with a boy I liked. I had an enormous crush on a very handsome guy.

The opening notes of Open Arms, one of the best slow dance love songs ever, came on, and he walked over to me and asked me to dance. WOW! My heart was pounding, my hands were sweaty, and to this day, it remains one of the most vivid memories of my teenage years. I can't hear that song without thinking of that moment. 'Nothing Compares 2 U'

My first memories of love songs were those I heard at my seventh-grade dance as I watched Sean Miller dance with Julie MacArthur to Sinead O'Connor's Nothing Compares 2 U. Ah, the sorrow! The pain! Not understanding what she said for three-fourths of the song, but howling along nonetheless.

I took a road trip one summer of college to New Orleans with a boyfriend. We were stuck on a sketchy stretch of highway in a three-hour traffic jam. It was hot, everyone was angry and there were swamps all around us. The mood was sort of tense. But then, the oldies station I had just flipped to started to play Frankie Valli's Can't Take My Eyes Off You.

I fell in love that night because I realized that anyone who could sit in a car with me and my lack of map skills that long, who could still laugh when I would get out and race the car whenever we'd move an inch, and who knew many, if not all, of the words to that song - well, that was the man for me. A year after the road trip, we rocked that song at our wedding reception. We are going on 11 years and I can truthfully say that I still can't take my eyes off of him. 'Lady'

Valentine's Day is a day I look forward to with all the joy of Ebenezer Scrooge. It reminds me that I'm still single (and almost 50) with no girlfriend/wife and prospects nonexistent. Plus, I work at a job where valentines are everywhere and employees talk about their big plans with their significant others on that day.

There are two love songs, however, that I play over and over to help me through the day. I pretend I sing these to my imaginary girlfriend and it helps to a degree. The first is Lady by Kenny Rogers. The second is Hello by Lionel Richie. I don't know why these songs help the way they do. I just know that they do. 'Leather and Lace'

My wife Diana and I met at the time Key Largo by Bertie Higgins came out, Ain't Even Done with the Night by John Mellencamp and Leather and Lace by Stevie Nicks and Don Henley. We used Leather and Lace as our first dance at the wedding! . . . Uh, me being the leather, of course. We also made a pact to stop everything and kiss right on the mouth when we heard it together! 'Love's Gonna Live Here'

Growing up we listened to a lot of classic country, so when I was going through my divorce, I gravitated to Dwight Yoakam's CD Dwight Sings Buck. In particular, the Buck Owens classic Love's Gonna Live Here. How could I not feel better with Dwight's twangy sound telling me "No more lonely nights, only happiness, love's gonna live here again?" It always brought a smile and when I moved into my new house I made sure it was the first song I turned up the volume on the stereo to! 'Please Don't Go'

I fell in love to KC & The Sunshine Band, Please Don't Go. I was crazy in love (lust?) for this super-hot guy, Marshall. He kind of looked like the Marlboro Man, only in a baseball hat and cleats instead of a cowboy hat on a horse. In the beginning, it seemed like the feeling was mutual. We lived an hour and a half apart, so when I came to his place, I came for the weekend. When I was getting ready to leave on Sundays, he played this song over and over.

When my heart's been broken, I play No Doubt's Don't Speak. I could tell our relationship was gradually starting to lose the spark. One weekend, I didn't get my routine phone call. With dread, I called him, asking if we would be getting together. I still remember his answer clearly: "Yes and no." My heart broke - I knew it was over.

When I fall out of love: Martin Briley's The Salt in My Tears. Any time I feel dissed by a guy, I try to think about the words to Briley's song: "You ain't worth the salt in my tears." 'Lei Pikake'

In the first years of our marriage, the appropriate songs for us were Foreigner's Cold As Ice and The Damage Is Done. But eventually things got better, and after 15 years, we decided to have a proper honeymoon in Hawaii.

One night on Kauai, we went to relax in the hotel lounge and listen to the father-and-son group performing there. They began a song so hauntingly beautiful that, even though we couldn't understand a word of it, we were weeping at its end. The song was Lei Pikake, about Princess Kaiulani's favorite flower, by a contemporary duo called Hapa. That became our song on that trip, and we've been Hapa fans ever since. 'A Case of You'

It was always Joni Mitchell. (Hey, if her songs could help her get over James Taylor, surely they could help me get over my heartbreak of the week.) If my roommate walked in and Blue was blasting from the stereo, especially if A Case of You was playing over and over, she knew it was time to get the suicide prevention hot line on speed dial. If I was in the mood for a (different) brand of empowerment, I'd turn to Carly Simon's I Haven't Got Time for the Pain. Either one comes over the airwaves today and I'm still transported to those times. 'She's Gonna Make It'

Music helped me survive high school. As for songs that helped me through the ups and downs of romance, when I broke off my "starter engagement," it was Garth Brooks' She's Gonna Make It. The lyric that followed, "and he never will," was especially helpful as I tossed out all the memories.

My future husband arrived around the same time period, (and) when we heard Kenny Chesney's How Forever Feels, we had to have the main lyric engraved on our wedding bands. We will be celebrating our 10th anniversary this July. 'Sea of Love'

Shortly after my wife and I began dating in the spring of 1993, she told me that she couldn't get the song Sea Of Love by The Honeydrippers out of her head.

In my vast CD collection, I didn't own that song. So I called a friend, who recorded the song onto a cassette (remember those?), to which I added other classy numbers by the likes of Tony Bennett, Harry Connick Jr. and others. Soon after, on her birthday, I took my lovely not-yet wife to dinner at Strings, with flowers pre-delivered to our table. My plan was to stop somewhere romantic on the way home and play the tape for her over the car stereo while we danced to Sea Of Love.

Unfortunately, a driving rain after dinner forced me to instead pull into a parking garage, for lack of anywhere else to go. As we danced by the glow of the headlights, she looked up at me and uttered the Freudian slip to end all Freudian slips. She said, "Thank you for making this the nicest wedding I've ever had. Birthday! I mean birthday!"

We eloped four months later.

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