The 11 Best Songs About Flowers

Written by Dayva Segal
Published: March 24, 2023
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Flowers are a frequent subject of songs as an analogy or symbol of love and growth, and other things. There are more than 400,000 types of flowers in the world, but most songs are about popular varieties like roses. Some songs lament flowers dying or celebrate flowers growing. Luckily you don’t need to be a gardening enthusiast to enjoy listening to music about flowers!

The following are some of the best songs about flowers. This list is not in order from best to worst—each one of these songs is equally amazing.

1. Every Rose Has Its Thorn – Poison

This power ballad, released in 1988, is glam rock band Poison’s only number-one hit. Bret Michaels, the band’s lead singer, wrote the song after finding out his girlfriend was cheating on him. He was at a laundromat in Dallas and called his girlfriend on a pay phone while waiting for his clothes to dry. During the call, he heard another man’s voice in the background. The lyrics, like the title, say that every rose has its thorn. Michaels has said that the rose was the fact that he was finding success in his musical career at the time, but the thorn is that his success was driving a wedge between him and his girlfriend. Others can identify with the analogy of this song even if they don’t have a burgeoning music career. The message is simply that every good situation can have downsides too.

2. Kiss From a Rose – Seal

Even though he wrote the song in 1987, Kiss From a Rose was not released until 1994. Seal says after recording the song he thought that the song was embarrassing, but now credits it as the song that made him a household name. It was featured in the 1995 Batman Forever soundtrack which helped it to reach number one on the charts in the US and Australia. The lyrics of the song are mysterious and Seal will not divulge their meaning. The line that fans especially wonder about is “I compare you to a kiss from a rose on the grey.” What do you think it means?

3. The Rose – Bette Middler

Bette Midler first recorded the song The Rose in 1979 for the soundtrack of the movie of the same name. The lyrics of the song mention that a lot of people have kind of negative opinions of love. They mention some people feel love is a river that drowns or a razor that causes wounds on the soul. However, the singer says she thinks love is a flower, and the subject of the song is its only seed. At the end of the song, she reminds the listener that even in winter, seeds are just waiting for the sun to bloom. This could be an analogy for love. Even when you feel like love is far away, there are seeds of love just waiting to bloom.

Pink Knockout Rose in a Rain Shower

The rose is the most frequent flower used to celebrate love.

©Emerald Pine Collective/Shutterstock.com

4. Build Me Up Buttercup – The Foundations

This classic pop song was released in 1968. It’s about a guy singing to a girl who has the nickname Buttercup. The guy is in love with her, but she doesn’t seem to reciprocate his feelings and prefers to tease him instead. She never calls even when she says she will, she’s always late, and she constantly lets him down, but he’s still madly in love with her!

5. Tiptoe Through the Tulips – Tiny Tim

This song was actually first published in 1929, but it regained popularity in 1968 when Tiny Tim sang it on the television show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In. Tiny Tim is well-known for his high falsetto voice which gives his songs a whimsical feeling. Tiptoe Through the Tulips became his most well-known song. The song is about someone who is inviting their crush to walk in a garden that is full of tulips and a willow tree. He asks for a pardon in case he gets swept up in the emotion of the moment and kisses his sweetie without asking first.

6. Where Have All the Flowers Gone – Pete Seeger

American folksinger and songwriter Pete Seeger wrote this song in 1955. He took inspiration from a traditional Cossack song called Koloda-Duda. More verses were added to the song in 1960. The song starts with the singer wondering where have the flowers gone, and discovering that women picked the flowers, hopefully preparing for marriage. However, the song gets darker as it goes on to discover that their husbands became soldiers, the soldiers went into graves, but then the graves turned into flowers. The song asks “When will they ever learn?” speaking about the ever-repeating cycles of violence and war in our society.

7. Blue Orchid – The White Stripes

The song Blue Orchid was released in 2005. People originally speculated that the alternative song was really about lead singer Jack White’s breakup with actress Renée Zellweger but he denies that. The angry-sounding song is about someone who was given a beautiful white orchid and changed its color to blue. The singer sees this person as ungrateful for the gift because they changed it and didn’t accept the gift as it was. The song also has Biblical undertones. The orchid is white, which is the color of purity, and the person in question may be taking away that purity. The song ends with Jack singing “get behind me” referencing the phrase “get behind me, satan.”

8. Sugar Magnolia – The Grateful Dead

Sugar Magnolia is one of the most popular tunes by the Grateful Dead. Released in 1970, the song is about a springtime romance. It is the kind of romance that blooms as the flowers do, like the magnolia tree. The writer, Bob Weir, speaks of a girl he saw by a river, and raves about her for the rest of the song. She seems to be the perfect girl for him. She waits for him backstage while he performs, is a good dancer, and “can make happy any man alive.”

southern magnolia

The Grateful Dead used the magnolia’s white, spring blooms to pay homage to young love. Many artists have celebrated romance with flowers.

©Nick Pecker/Shutterstock.com

9. Roses – Outkast

Roses is a 2004 song by the duo Outkast, which consists of rappers André 3000 and Big Boi. The song is about a girl who thinks she is really awesome, so she has been playing games with her boyfriend. However, according to Outkast, she is not all she thinks she is. She is so full of herself that she thinks her excrement smells like roses, but Outkast is here to remind her it actually smells like the real thing.

10. Iris – The Goo Goo Dolls

Iris was originally released in 1998 as part of the soundtrack for the movie City of Angels. It hit number one on the charts in Australia, Canada, and Italy, and had wide success in the UK and US too. SPOILER ALERT: In the movie, Nick Cage’s character is an angel who gives up his immortality to experience love. The song reflects this storyline from the character’s voice. He’d give up forever just to touch his love, and he feels more like he is in heaven when he is with her on earth as a human than when he was actually in heaven as an angel.

11. Botanical Romance – Isobel Anderson

This whimsical folk song by British singer Isobel Anderson speaks about a chance meeting at a market. She says she met a romantic interest, and they took a magical walk together through the botanical gardens. As they walked, flowers bloomed under their feet, and they seemed to fall in love. But then, somewhat suddenly, the singer reveals that it was all a daydream. She never even talked to the guy, they only smiled at each other from afar at the market and she wonders if it is time to move on from her daydream.

The photo featured at the top of this post is © Sergey V Kalyakin/Shutterstock.com


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About the Author

Dayva is a writer at A-Z Animals primarily covering astrology, animals, and geography. She has over 12 years of experience as a writer, and graduated from Hofstra University in 2007 with a Bachelor of Science in Music and a Minor in French. She has also completed course work in Core Strengths Coaching, Hypnotherapy, and Technical Communication. Dayva lives in the SF Bay Area with her cute but very shy cat, Tula.

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