Hospital Radio: The best music to get you in the mood for spring

The weather has been pretty good over the last few weeks, we have been able to turn off the central heating, the washing can go on the line outside and we have been scrabbling around to find the sun cream. 

The change of season made me think about songs that celebrate spring. When I started to look I soon realised that there are very few hits containing the words "spring". that have made the charts.

To be precise, only three have reached the top 30 The first was in 1956 when the legendary  crooner Tony Bennett and Come Next Spring, reached number 29. 

Tony sang this over the credits of the film drama of the same name. Next was  Love Unlimited's a girl group put together by Barry White with It May Be Winter Outside (But In My Heart It's Spring), it was co-written by White also. It did reasonably well, peaking at number 11.

 Most recently, La Primavera (which literally translates to springtime) by German producers Sash! got to number 3 in 1998. 

Since then, a few songs have flirted with success in some niche charts but nothing in the Official Charts. 

That is not to say there have not been songs about spring, that’s if we think of flowers, I think that’s a fair way to think about this time of year with all the new blooms beginning to show.

The highest charting "flowers" songs are the  Number 1 by Scott McKenzie and his hippy anthem San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Some Flowers in Your Hair) in 1967 and Miley Cyrus’s Flowers which is the longest-running Number 1 single by a female solo artist this decade, with 10 weeks at the top. 

A couple of others have done well: Post Malone's Sunflower, in 2018, Flowers in the Rain by The Move (the first song ever to be played on Radio 1) and Sweet Female Attitude's Flowers in 2000, all reached number two.

Nine blossoms have graced the chart, two of them going to Number 1, having said that they were both the same song, Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, by different artists in the same year. Perez 'Prez' Prado and his Orchestra in March and Eddie Calvert in April of 1955. 

Times have changed and I think it unlikely anything as twee will top the charts this year, although I see Dandelion by Ariana Grande is doing quite well.

Spring may also remind you of bunnies and newborn lambs and they are represented as well famously by Chas and Dave, with rabbit, which is nothing to do with our furry friends of course. 

Lambs have made it once with Mary had a Little Lamb, from Paul McCartney's Wings, a number 9 in1972. The latter being based on the traditional nursery rhyme and generally ridiculed by music critics. One describing it as ‘tripe!’

Now, if classical music is more your thing, why not try Vivaldi and Spring from Four Seasons. This work especially appealed to the French. King Louis XV took a liking to 'Spring' and ordered it to be performed whenever he pleased, you can do that if you are King.

I am not sure what the composer intended, he gave instructions in the  score to play "like a barking dog" or "like a sleeping goatherd," with performers having to use their imagination to achieve the sound Vivaldi had in mind. Alternatively, why not give Spring Song by Mendelssohn a listen. It is an enchanting piano piece, which I guarantee you will recognise and is a staple of classical piano repertoire, loved by pianists worldwide.

Just a final word about my colleague Geoff Webb here at Hospital Radio, who has won the bronze in the best male presenter category at the Hospital Broadcasting Awards. He will claim it to be team effort, but we know better. Well done Geoff. You can hear him on Thursday nights 7pm until 9pm.