Agnes Obel’s New Album, The Meaning of Flowers, Arrives Today
“My daughter’s presence and energy colour everything on this album”
Agnes Obel
Listen to The Meaning of Flowers here
Berlin, 18 September 2026. Deutsche Grammophon is delighted to announce that The Meaning of Flowers, Agnes Obel’s first studio album since Myopia (2020), is out now in all formats. On The Meaning of Flowers Obel explores the vivid sense of interconnection with all living things she experienced during pregnancy, finding inspiration in ideas about birth, growth and metamorphosis in the world around us, among other themes. Her 12 atmospheric tracks draw on a range of sources, from the poetry of Enheduanna (the world’s first named author) and the philosophical writings of Hannah Arendt and Emanuele Coccia, to the Danish pop scene of the 80s and 90s. The album is dedicated to Obel’s daughter: “she who has changed me and raised me and taught me so much”.
Written, recorded, arranged and produced by the artist in her Berlin studio, The Meaning of Flowers features Obel herself on vocals (some pitch-shifted), piano, keys, synths and samples, with guest musicians adding violin, viola, cello, bass, lap steel, harmonium, flute, sax, percussion and backing vocals to the mix.
“The Meaning of Flowers” was the first track written for the album. Its title came from Obel’s reading of Coccia’s The Life of Plants and Metamorphoses. As she said in a recent interview, “Flowers are these tiny things that exist within an insanely huge and complex planet of mountains and oceans, but they also have their own hyper-complex biology … So, for me, the song had to be something small and beautiful, but enormous at the same time, in the title at least.”
Blood so Red, about the primal experience of giving birth, was influenced by Enheduanna’s hymns to Inanna – goddess of childbirth, love, sex, song and war. Gemini and Laymelli too were inspired by Enheduanna, but also by Obel’s awareness of a complex universe “held together by the beauty and power of life and metamorphosis”, again based on ideas discussed by Coccia.
The other influences on the album include 70s movie scores (Don’t Look Down) and Danish pop (Never Been), while its only instrumental track (Tangerine) features sax arpeggios, celesta and piano, their upbeat combination of sounds forming a “bubbly new wondrous friendship”.
Agnes Obel – forthcoming tour dates:
24 Sep – Queensland Performing Arts Centre, Brisbane · 26 Sep – Hamer Hall, Melbourne
27 Sep – Sydney Opera House · 29 Sep – New Zealand International Convention Centre, Auckland
2027:
21 Sep – Tonhalle, Düsseldorf · 23 Sep – Olympia, Paris
27 Sep – Royal Theatre Carré, Amsterdam · 28 Sep – Muziekgebouw, Eindhoven
29 Sep – TivoliVredenburg, Utrecht · 1 Oct – Sentrum Scene, Oslo
2 Oct – Konserthuset, Stockholm · 3 Oct – Operaen, Copenhagen
13 Oct – Teatro Duse, Bologna · 14 Oct – Auditorium Parco della Musica, Rome
16 Oct – Bâtiment des Forces Motrices, Geneva · 17 Oct – Halle aux Grains, Toulouse
19 Oct – Paral·lel 62, Barcelona · 20 Oct – The Music Station, Madrid
23 Oct – Theatro Circo, Braga · 2 Nov – Bozar, Brussels
3 Nov – Stadsschouwburg, Antwerp · 4 Nov – Eventim Apollo, London
6 Nov – Amphithéâtre 3000, Lyon · 9 Nov – Liederhalle (Beethoven-Saal), Stuttgart
10 Nov – Meistersingerhalle, Nuremberg · 12 Nov – Laeiszhalle, Hamburg
13 Nov – Uber Eats Music Hall, Berlin
2027 European tour tickets are on sale now.
Agnes Obel – The Meaning of Flowers
Books and poetry read while making the album
Fiction and non-fiction:
Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, 1958
Banks, Jennifer, Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth, 2023
Bowen-Moore, Patricia, Hannah Arendt’s Philosophy of Natality, 1989
Butler, Octavia, Dawn, 1987
Cage, John, Silence: Lectures and Writings, 1961
Coccia, Emanuele, The Life of Plants: A Metaphysics of Mixture, 2019
Coccia, Emanuele, Metamorphoses, 2021
Jones, Lucy, Matrescence: On the Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood, 2023
Morton, Timothy, All Art Is Ecological, 2018
Nørgård, Per, Artikler 1962–1982, Ivan Hansen (ed.), 1982
Rasmussen, Karl Aage, Musik i det tyvende århundrede: en fortælling, 2011
Poetry:
Akbar, Kaveh (ed.), The Penguin Book of Spiritual Verse: 100 Poets on the Divine, 2022
Christensen, Inger, Samlede Digte, 2009
Enheduanna, Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author, trans. Sophus Helle, 2023
(orig. c.2300 BCE)
Graham, Jorie, The Dream of the Unified Field, 2002
Kurtz, Ella; King, Simone; Delahunty, Claire (eds.), What We Carry: Poetry on Childbearing, 2021
