Mzansi Keeps It Local This Valentine’s Day

This year, Mzansi’s Valentine’s mood sounds unmistakably homegrown. Local titles are not sitting at the edges of romance playlists; they are shaping the centre, with Maskandi’s IVALENTINE and Amapiano’s Shela standing out among South Africa’s most included Valentine tracks.

Even in the all-time love song ranking, local voices are holding their own. R&B, Afropop and  Dance/Electronic artist Loyiso stands out as the only South African artist with four songs in the 25 most-streamed love songs of all time – Dream About You, What I Would Say, You’re So You and Let Me Love You, nearing 34 million combined streams.

The clearest shift is in how younger listeners are naming and feeling love. In South Africa, Gen Z playlist language shows strong positive year-on-year growth across emotionally charged keywords, with “rizz” up 35%, “simp” up 38%, and “yearn” up 321%. 

These are not small movements. They point to a generation that treats romance less like a performance and more like lived emotion.

That emotional honesty also shows up in the love-versus-heartbreak split. Heartbreak music listening has increased by 72% over the past three years, with women driving 60% of the consumption. Bafazi siya gowa neh? This signals that Valentine’s Day listening now makes room for longing, recovery, and reflection alongside romance.

Friendship-led celebration continues to grow, too. Galentine playlist behaviour in South Africa shows an average 71% year-on-year increase, which reinforces how much this moment now belongs to communities of women curating their own soundtrack for the day.

And shared listening keeps rising. Blend activity around Valentine’s shows positive momentum, with hours played on Valentine’s Day increasing by about 21% year-on-year in the dataset, underscoring a wider shift toward collective, co-curated listening experiences.

Valentine’s in South Ah is now distinctly local, emotionally fluent, and socially shared: Maskandi and iPiano for the love story, heartbreak records for the truth, Galentine energy for the sisterhood, and Blend for the people choosing to listen together.