{a playlist for the children of spring}

1. after hours - the velvet underground

(listen to this while you flip pancakes that are probably too big and half-burnt. coat them in maple syrup, sticky-sweet and tender with doom.)

2. sugar on my tongue - talking heads

(listen to this only through headphones and clean your house, wearing cotton pyjama shorts that say bite me. clean and dance and dance and clean and clean and sweat and sweat and sweat.)

3. le cannibale - juniore

(listen to this through the muffled speakers of a quaint cafe on Main Street. order an almond mocha even though you said you’d give up caffeine. pay in gold coins and your mortality.)

4. vanilla baby - billie marten

(listen to this crouched on concrete steps hugging your knees to your chest for warmth. have an optional menthol cigarette tucked between your middle and forefinger. you can cry here, it’s okay.)

5. lovefool - the cardigans

(listen to this whilst roller skating in a mini skirt on the backstreets of your hometown, the route the school bus takes, so the road will be smoothest. close your eyes if you can balance. you made it.)

6. the lovecats - the cure

(listen to this at an insufferably loud volume, the kind that makes the elderly couple across the street curse. slide across the bottom floor in socks. this sound, this hum of socks on floorboards, is the song of spring.)

7. the end of the world - skeeter davis

(listen to this song in an open field. one with an impossible amount of trees that stretches far into the horizon you can’t imagine the rest of the world existing around it. stretch out your arms, until they’re no longer a part of your body but are branches floating by your sides, and spin. lift your chin to the clouds so the sun can kiss your collarbones.)

8. everybody loves somebody - dean martin

(listen to this only if you’re ready to love again. and if you are, play it through your phone whilst you brush your teeth for nine mornings in a row. love is coming because spring has sprung and darling, they are the same thing.)

9. my funny valentine - chet baker

(listen to this between the hours of 1-3am. sit in the dark and lean against something cold and unforgiving. you’ll see why they call it jazz-induced psychosis.)