One of the most poignant songs I know, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most” is a meditation on lost love penned in 1955 by Fran Landesman and Tommy Wolf. The title is a loose reference to T.S. Eliot’s “April is the cruelest month.”
For me, one year on, spring is an equal mix of hope and “hanging you up.” The wild, stressful experiences of March and April 2020 are constantly in my mind, even as I see 1/4 of the US population has received at least 1 vaccination dose.
Here’s my favorite version of the song, as interpreted by the poet laureate of jazz singers, the inimitable Mark Murphy.