Five Minutes More

One of Cahn and Styne’s biggest postwar hits, this playful plea for just a little more time with a sweetheart topped the Billboard charts in 1946. Sinatra’s recording sold over a million copies, and Tex Beneke’s version was a simultaneous hit — a sign of how broadly the song connected with a war-weary public ready to enjoy peacetime romance.

Light, witty, and irresistibly singable, it’s a perfect example of Cahn’s gift for turning a simple emotional moment into an earworm.