About that group chat … it’s bad. And the spectre of autocracy is even worse, David Remnick argues. But, first, put on our playlist to help you navigate the atmospheric flip-flop of spring. Plus:

•  How Donald Trump throttled Big Law
•  Amanda Seyfried on four books that made her feel less alone
•  Joe Rogan and the men who love him

Amanda Petrusich
Petrusich has been covering music for the magazine since 2015.

I’ve always found the shift from winter to spring to be existentially choppy: a lot of false starts, a lot of jouncing from feelings of elation and rebirth to realizing that, actually, you have prematurely packed away your big dumb coat. Everything is soft and muddy right now, including my psyche. Because the hope and beauty of spring is also the pressure of spring; it’s time to emerge, in our sundresses and short shorts, for picnics, first dates, barbecues, and long, joyful hangs in the late-afternoon sunshine. Yet, as Ella Fitzgerald sang, in 1961, those first steps can be tentative, fraught:

Spring this year has got me feeling
Like a horse that’s never left the post
I lie in my room staring up at the ceiling
Spring can really hang you up the most.

For me, these fifteen tunes, below, have been a solid hand to hold on the weirdest, most transitional days. Go easy, I say—it’s been a long winter. We’ll get there soon enough, inching toward the jubilance of what Justin Vernon of Bon Iver sings about in his new single: “And damn, if I’m not climbing up a tree right now / And everything is peaceful love.”

Bon Iver, “Everything Is Peaceful Love”
Bill Withers, “Lovely Day (Studio Rio Version)”
Steve Lacy, “Sunshine”
Fontaines D.C., “Favourite”
Beach House, “Myth”
Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Hysteric”
Phosphorescent, “Revelator”
Waxahatchee, “Lilacs”
Grateful Dead, “Box of Rain”
Wilco, “Love Is Everywhere (Beware)”
The Weather Station, “Tried to Tell You”
The Magnetic Fields, “Strange Powers”
Simon & Garfunkel, “April Come She Will”
Ella Fitzgerald, “Spring Can Really Hang You Up the Most”
Donna Summer, “Spring Affair”

Listen to the playlist »