Top 10 Songs About Flowers

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We like to think of rock and roll as all leather, sweat, and attitude, but if you peel back the distortion, you’ll find a genre built by absolute romantics. Rock stars love to play the tough guy, but at their core, they are often the most sentimental poets in the room, they just hide it behind a wall of roaring amplifiers. Flowers have always been the ultimate vehicle for that sentimentality. For decades, artists have reached for them not to be pretty, but to be heavy. Sometimes a flower in a rock song is a literal, fragile thing trying to survive the cracks in the pavement, but more often, it’s a killer metaphor.

To do this theme justice, a list can’t just stick to the obvious radio staples. That’s why this breakdown strikes a deliberate balance: you will find the massive, legendary anthems that defined eras—the ones people would throw a fit over if they were left off—stacked right alongside those brilliant, buried deep tracks that regular radio completely forgot.

# 10 – Flower Punk – Frank Zappa

It’s always fun to open up a topic song list with a Frank Zappa song.”Flower Punk” appeared on Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention’s 1968 album We’re Only in It for the Money, The album featured Zappa on guitar, piano, vocals, and keyboards, alongside Jimmy Carl Black, Roy Estrada, Bunk Gardner, Billy Mundi, Don Preston, Ian Underwood, and Jim “Motorhead” Sherwood. “Flower Punk” serves as one of Zappa’s sharpest satirical attacks on the flower power movement of the late 1960s, parodying both the counterculture and the garage rock classic “Hey Joe.” The song follows a young man heading to San Francisco to become a flower child, join a psychedelic rock band, smoke marijuana, and pursue the lifestyle associated with the hippie scene. Long live Frank Zappa. We lost him at such a young age.

# 9 – Wildflower – Sheryl Crow

The first of two songs using the word Wildflower on this list goes to Sheryl Crow. This one also served as the title track to her 2005 album. This is one of my favorite show albums, where she really takes late sixties, early seventies music and incorporates it into a nice, modern sound. Being the same age as her, I can really understand where she’s coming from melodically and lyrically. This album also earned her a Grammy nomination for Best Pop Vocal Album.

# 8 – Lilac Wine – Nina Simone

We get two for the price of one with this mesmerizing track by Nina Simone. This is actually a very old song written by James Shelton in 1950 for the Broadway play Dance Me a Song. Nina Simone recorded it for her 1966 album Wild Is the Wind.

# 7 – Sunflower – Glen Campbell

This legendary song, written by Neil Diamond, got the Glen Campbell treatment in the 1970s. “Sunflower” was released on June 20, 1977, as the second single from Glen Campbell’s album Southern Nights. The song reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Easy Listening chart, No. 4 on the Billboard Country chart, and No. 39 on the Billboard Hot 100. Neil Diamond would record his own version many years later in 2019.

# 6 – Crimson and Clover – Tommy James and the Shondells

With this one, we got Tommy James’ favorite color and flower at the same time. Although I think he just like the way the words sounded together. He was right, so were millions of other people who came to love this song. Joan Jett did a rocking version of this one as well.

# 5 – Rose Tattoo – Dropkick Murphys

We get another two for one with this track, a song about roses and tattoos at the same time. Nonetheless, if I get a chance to mention these guys in any songs list, I’m going to do it because I love this band. The Dropkick Murphys were first formed in 1996. They hail from the city of Quincy, Massachusetts. Pure unfiltered genuine Celtic rock and roll with an attitude.

# 4 – Scarlet Begonias – The Grateful Dead

We always try to mix it up on these lists, combining deep tracks, maybe some songs you haven’t heard before but definitely deserve mention, and, of course, the classics. So I think it’s safe to say that the next four on this list are definitely a part of the classics, starting with the Grateful Dead’s legendary piece, “Scarlet Begonias.”

# 3 – Dead Flowers – The Rolling Stones

This one stands out easily as one of the best tracks the Stones ever recorded. It was also released on an album called Sticky Fingers, which many fans rate as maybe the best Stones album, right up there with Exile On Main Street. For me, the early 1970s were when the Stones released their best stuff. Although, I have always been a big fan of the albums Black and Blue (1975) and Some Girls (1978).

# 2 – Wildflowers – Tom Petty

There would be a lot of angry people if we didn’t include this song on the list. This is one of Tom Petty’s most tender-written songs. Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the songs he released on his solo albums and the ones he released with the Heartbreakers. This was the title track to one of his solo albums released in 1994. It was produced by Rick Rubin, and although it was labeled a solo album, most of the Heartbreakers played on the record, though they were spread across different tracks.

# 1 – Love Is a Rose – Linda Ronstadt

I just had to close this list with the wonderful voice of Linda Ronstadt. As I was writing this, I was thinking, you know, I don’t think I’ve ever met anybody who’s a singer who has not liked Linda Ronstadt. She released her version of this classic song on her grand album, Prisoner In Disguise, in 1975. “Love Is A Rose” was the first single released from the album. The song was written by Neil Young.