You can love or hate Rupi Kaur’s brand of short, digestible Instagram poetry, but there’s no denying she’s inspirational for a lot of people. A few of those people are the members of the Manchester-borne band Blossoms, who recently released a single inspired by a poem from Kaur’s 2014 poetry book Milk and Honey.
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“To Do List (After the Breakup)” was directly inspired by the poem of the same name, which is a list of things to do to make the reader feel better after the titular breakup. The poem includes things like “don’t look at old photos” and “do not beg for what does not want to stay.”
[RELATED: Rick Astley Teams with Blossoms for Set of Smiths Covers at Glastonbury]
The Blossoms single takes similar concepts as well as direct lines from the poem and expands on them, such as asking in the last lines, “What is the price we pay for love?” Lyrically, the track goes beyond the poem, creating its own narrative of the breakup: I’ve been wondering why heartbreak’s not taught / In school to warn us what we’re in for / I’d of got myself a degree to be sure, goes the fourth verse, playing a bit on the hopeless feeling from the first few lines of the poem, directly after the breakup.
“We initially kicked the song around as a band in a way that we did when we first started — all in the round together at our rehearsal room,” said Tom Ogden, Blossoms’ frontman, according to a report from Far Out Magazine. He continued, “It’s something we’ve not really been able to do for a long time but it felt so natural and euphoric for the five of us! Some of the song’s DNA lies within the local Manchester bands we grew up listening to from our parents’ record collections, bands like New Order and James.”
“To Do List (After the Breakup)” features fellow Manchester artist Findlay, and was produced by James Skelly, former frontman of late-’90s band The Coral. It is the first single Blossoms have released since their 2022 LP Ribbon Around the Bomb.
Sonically, the single is synthy and a bit Matt and Kim-coded, but Blossoms do a great job of lyrically translating the free-verse list poem into a catchy, relatable single paired with an 80s-inspired pop sound.
Blossoms garnered praise from Rick Astley recently after their performance at Glastonbury 2023, where they teamed up and played a set dedicated to The Smiths covers. Astley compared Blossoms to their fellow Mancunians, stating, “The Smiths were everything. They just did something that was completely different, and it turned me on in a major way.” He continued, “And what is amazing is that Blossoms do exactly the same and they weren’t even born. That just goes to show The Smiths could have passed on but their music would still be here. Blossoms are great. They’re a really, really, really good live band.”
Photo by Lorne Thomson/Redferns
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