Dear listeners,
This is Dani Blum, a health reporter and sometime music writer at The New York Times, filling in for Lindsay this week.
May is when music leaks outside, when songs start to seep out of car windows, when clusters of speakers clog parks. This always feels like a kind of benediction to me, or a reward for the long slog of murky, soggy spring.
You know the saying about the seasonal blossoming — so with that in mind, I put together a playlist focused on flowers, but also on the quiet, thrumming hope that comes this time of year. Call it post-spring, pre-summer, the sweetest form of seasonal purgatory. This playlist features songs from across the last decade, including older tracks from Lorde and Lana Del Rey — two artists whose new music I’m most excited to hear this summer — as well as an understated track from the queen of last summer, Charli XCX.
Listen along while you read.
1. Faye Webster featuring Father: “Flowers”
The Atlanta-based indie singer Faye Webster can tell an entire story with the quake in her voice. Her vowels seem to cave in as she sings, “Can you just give me all your time?/ I’m gonna try give you mine.” It’s a simple couplet that binds the song together, equal parts pleading and reassuring.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
2. Waxahatchee: “Lilacs”
“Lilacs” is the ideal soundtrack for splaying in the park with a beer on the first warm day of the year. The song isn’t in a rush; it drifts by, marking, as Katie Crutchfield sings, “the slow, slow, slow passing of time.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
3. Lana Del Rey: “Violets for Roses”
Nobody paints a scene like Lana. This song pulses with specific images from an early post-pandemic summer; she marvels at sun-dressed girls no longer in masks, at bookstore doors that are finally open. She turns her observation inward, mapping her own emotional terrain: “Every since I fell out of love with you / I fell back in love with me,” she sings, and then murmurs, like she’s letting you in on a secret, “Boy, does it feel sweet.”
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
4. Lorde: “Hard Feelings/Loveless”
The double whammy of “Hard Feelings/Loveless” gets me every time. No one has captured the contours of heartbreak quite as well as Lorde did on “Melodrama” (2017). Here, she details the small, shaky ways she’s learning to take care of herself, lighting candles, filling every room she passes with cut flowers.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
5. Charli XCX: “White Roses”
This A.G. Cook-produced track is a sleeper from “Number 1 Angel” (2017) — it’s not as brash or propulsive as her songs from “Brat,” but there’s quiet urgency here. Her writing is sleek and sparse.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
6. SZA: “Garden (Say It Like Dat)”
SZA is the poet laureate of self-deception. On “Garden (Say It Like Dat),” she talks herself in and out of believing someone who claims to love her; she tries her best to stay grounded, even as she confronts just how badly she wants this to work.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
7. Audrey Nuna: “Blossom”
This song from the rapper and sometime singer Audrey Nuna sounds like a car revving up, like someone warming up at the mic. I always underestimate its ability to stick in my head — once I’ve listened once, I know I’ll play this track at least three or four more times in a row.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
8. Troye Sivan: “Bloom”
One of Troye Sivan’s earliest hits, “Bloom” is a pop masterpiece: strident, swirling, sung through a wink.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
9. Post Malone and Swae Lee: “Sunflower”
Yes, this is technically a song from a Spider-Man movie, but “Sunflower” is also Post Malone at his best, and among his most gentle sounding performances. Whoever stuck him and Swae Lee together knew what they were doing; the two play off each other, crooning and captivating.
▶ Listen on Spotify, Apple Music or YouTube
“April Showers Bring May Flowers” track list
Track 1: Faye Webster featuring Father, “Flowers”
Track 2: Waxahatchee, “Lilacs”
Track 3: Lana Del Rey, “Violets for Roses”
Track 4: Lorde, “Hard Feelings/Loveless”
Track 5: Charli XCX, “White Roses”
Track 6: SZA, “Garden (Say It Like Dat)”
Track 7: Audrey Nuna, “Blossom”
Track 8: Troye Sivan, “Bloom”
Track 9: Post Malone and Swae Lee, “Sunflower”
