Tell us: Which song deserves more attention?

In 1750, Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus, incapacitated by a severe bout of gout, dictated the contents of his pioneering botany textbook to one of his students. Philosophia Botanica (1751) introduced Linnaeus' system for identifying and naming plants, explained through concise annotations. 

In the work, he also assigned genders to plants, using symbols dating back to the 4th century and originally associated with horoscopes. These symbols remain widely recognizable today. The most famous are a circle with a cross beneath (female) and a circle with an upward-pointing arrow at the top right of the circle (male).

A lesser-known symbol represents transgender identity by combining the traditional male and female symbols, augmented with a second arrow featuring a crossbar in the upper-left part of the circle. While the symbol is a modern design, transgender identities have been documented in history since ancient times and have also been observed in the animal and plant kingdoms.

At various times and in different cultures, transsexuality has been venerated and celebrated. Yet, these days, most trans individuals frequently face discrimination, rejection and exclusion. The Red Hot Organization actively promotes acceptance of trans rights, often through music projects. Their latest release, Transa: Selects, includes the deeply moving ballad "Young Lion" by Sade, a tender dedication to her trans son, Izaak. Our song of the day.

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Dig Deeper

With Kokomo City, D. Smith, who once wrote and produced a notable song with Lil Wayne that Kendrick Lamar later rapped on, has created a moving and award-winning documentary about the experiences and views of four Black trans women (recognized at the Sundance Film Festival and Berlin International Film Festival). A gem! 

"For all the exaggerated winks in the music choices and provocative shots of beautifully lit buttocks, the film is an open and celebratory space in which the women can tell their stories. Some of them are hilarious, others bruising, all are painfully forthright about the all-too-real dangers they face." – Wendy Ide, The Observer

Watch it here

If an object’s density is less than or equal to that of a liquid, it will float on the liquid’s surface; otherwise, it will sink. This is the principle of buoyancy, where an object displaces a volume of liquid equal to its weight. A buoy, designed specifically to float on water, serves as a perfect example.

People can float too—in saltwater, for instance, or metaphorically. During deep relaxation, you might feel as though you’re “floating” as well as during moments of emotional detachment or stress. Such feelings can stem from a broken heart, as beautifully captured in Julee Cruise’s dream pop gem “I Float Alone,” which is today’s song.

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Dig Deeper

Julee Cruise’s “I Float Alone” was written and produced by director David Lynch and composer Angelo Badalamenti. Lynch featured the song in Industrial Symphony No. 1: The Dream of the Broken Hearted, a concert performance he directed that starred Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, Michael J. Anderson and Cruise herself. The avant-garde play was staged twice in 1989 as part of the New Music America Festival in New York. Footage from these performances was later compiled for a home video release in 1990, which is available on YouTube.

Danish composer and viola player Astrid Sonne’s first two albums were purely instrumental: “I’m so awful at writing [lyrics], I would do anything to avoid it,” she said in an interview back in 2019. Fortunately, she’s changed her mind: Sonne’s third album Great Doubt is filled with careful singer-songwriter-style lyrics while losing none of her experimental, classical-meets-electronic sound.

The track “Staying Here”, for example, features no percussion, but winds itself around a melody played on a church organ. Combined with the lyrics, “Lost my ring, here’s my palm,” the image is crystal clear: Someone is getting married.

Sonne has chosen a particular and evocative storytelling element: Wedding rings were already a thing in Ancient Egypt as well as in Greek and Roman antiquity. They have remained the symbol of loving devotion ever since.

Throughout the centuries, the rings varied in style: In 17th-century Europe, they often included an engraved “Poesy”; the Puritans, ever, uh, puritan, gifted their brides a thimble instead of a ring (although they were allowed to cut off the bottom of the thimble and wear that as a wedding band. My, my, Jeremiah!).

Some elements of the tradition are, however, a lot more recent: Men only started to wear wedding rings in the last century, and the diamond ring reached its fairytale-standard-status only as recently as 1948 when the jeweler house De Beers launched the slogan, “A Diamond is Forever.” As with all the other ring styles, the diamond will probably not really be forever—but the symbol of the ring itself, it seems, just might be.

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