Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most

by on March 21, 2025

Posted in: Uncategorized

Happy Spring! This is the most confusing, yet revelatory, taxing, yet rewarding season. A season with a vague beginning and a vague end.

Spring, for the most part, has kind of always sucked for me. I have been a long time Spring-hater for a plethora of reasons… and I hate that I hate Spring, but I’m definitely not the first to. For example, the beautiful jazz standard, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most,” (I prefer the version performed by Ella Fitzgerald, though it is originally written and composed by Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf respectively) has these wonderfully crushing lyrics:

“Once I was a sentimental thing
Gave my heart away each spring
Now a spring romance hasn’t got a chance”

and

“Old man winter was a gracious host
But when you start praying for snow to hide the clover
Spring can really hang you up the most”

And then we have something like one of Emily Dickinson’s (famous poet from the 19th century ) most notable poems which is 7 stanzas of straight up Spring slander. It’s riddled with lines like:

“I dreaded that first Robin so”

and,

“I dared not meet the Daffodils”

also,

“I could not bear the Bees should come, I wished they’d stay away.”

I’m sure the abhorrence stems from what Spring says about the passage of time, aging, regrowth, and all those sweet sweet unchangeable, indiscriminate, destructive (yet) indestructible forces of The Universe or God or A Secret Third Option. Change is hard. Becoming new is hard. Letting the sun in after shutting it out for so long kind of burns; you may not have the endurance for warmth like you used to. The inconsistency of the season feels like a cruel joke. It feels like betrayal. Why was it 67 and sunny yesterday but it snowed this morning?? Can I even trust you, Spring?

But I am ready to turn a new leaf and usher this season in with a line up of Spring tunes that would (hopefully) make flowers grow if you stuck a JBL into the ground on full volume. I don’t think Spring has to hurt. We can reduce it to a dull ache.

Spring Is Gonna Be Hugeee This Year

  1. Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most by Ella Fitzgerald
  2. Kind of by Faye Webster
  3. Mela by Esperanza Spalding
  4. Essentially by Japanese Breakfast
  5. Down in Atlanta by Yusef Lateef
  6. You Make It Easy by Air
  7. Aguas De Marco by Elis Regina, Antonio Carlos Jobim
  8. You Know More Than I Know by John Cale
  9. Rise by Solange

Leave a Reply