Romantic Punjabi Songs — Love Songs Worth a Playlist

Harrdy Sandhu with Jaani writing and B Praak producing — the same team behind a large share of this era's biggest Punjabi songs. It is a straightforward admiration song with a chorus designed to be sung badly at someone, which is the correct and intended use for it.

Maninder Buttar addressing her friends — 'sakhiyan' — rather than the girl herself, which is a neat piece of writing and an old device in Punjabi folk. It was later remade for a Hindi film, but the Punjabi original is the version with the better vocal performance.

Sukh-E singing over his own production to a Jaani lyric. A 'coka' is a nose pin, and the entire song is built on that one small detail — a useful reminder that Punjabi love songs are usually about a specific object rather than an abstraction.

AP Dhillon and Gurinder Gill, from the Canadian wave that traded dhol for a slow, hazy, R&B-shaped beat. It sounds almost nothing like the Punjabi love songs above it on this list, and that contrast is the whole point of including it here.

Harnoor was very young when this came out and it made him a name almost immediately. The arrangement is deliberately thin — guitar, voice, a little percussion — which suits a song about noticing someone's earrings rather than declaring anything undying.

From Karan Aujla's Making Memories project. He is a writer first — he wrote for other artists before fronting his own records — and it shows in how conversational the lyric stays. Flirtatious rather than devotional, and one of the biggest Punjabi songs of its year.

Diljit Dosanjh singing in Punjabi with an English hook, which in 2016 was still slightly unusual for a mainstream Punjabi single. It is a compliment song rather than a longing song, and that lightness is why it shows up at engagements and anniversaries as often as it does on personal playlists.