From Mariah Carey to K-Pop, songs about butterflies are gateways to our inner transformation.
Across the globe and spanning multitudes of cultures, the butterfly represents different specific aspects of our spiritual being and experience, such as transition, new beginnings, innocence, hope, love, life, immortality and the soul.
Our collection of butterfly inspired music is here to help you to harness the shimmering beauty of glowing evening wings, as we craft a soundtrack for your own stunning personal change, no matter where the winds have taken you.
Songs About Butterflies
1. Mariah Carey – Butterfly
Mariah Carey’s Butterfly is a lush, soulful song about letting go of the one you love more deeply than anything, giving them the space for their own transformation so they can become their best selves.
Mariah imagines herself as the person who has trapped a butterfly under glass, thinking she could keep them forever, but realises, “Now I understand, to hold you, I must open up my hands and watch you rise.
Spread your wings and prepare to fly, for you have become a butterfly.”
In a song laced with endings and positive changes, Mariah encourages the acceptance of nature’s course however hurtful the process may be, capturing the very essence of heartbreak while hoping for a future blessed with transformation and the renewal of her love.
2. 이달의 소녀 (Loona) – Butterfly
K-Pop sensation Loona’s anthem, Butterfly, is all about finding that metamorphic feeling of blossoming, fluttery love.
The song is partly inspired by the Butterfly Effect, a theory made famous by the similarly titled film, where any insignificant decision could have an overwhelming effect on your future, altering the course of your life for better or for worse.
Taking it a step further, the flap of a butterflies’ wings at a precise moment in time could start a hurricane on the other side of the world.
Butterfly embeds this sentiment beautifully; “It starts with a small flap, now inside my heart, a hurricane,” showing how one person can completely redesign your life and give you the feeling of being a butterfly hatching from its cocoon.
3. HIM – Wings of A Butterfly
Rock band HIM’s track, Wings of a Butterfly, paints a dark and tainted tone upon the insect’s delicate and graceful nature.
The chorus, “Come on and show them your love, rip out the wings of a butterfly for your soul, my love,” rallied by the resounding title lyric, “rip out the wings of a butterfly” denotes the act of destroying everything that is innocent in order to be with someone you think you love, but who in reality is probably terrible for you.
HIM’s symbolic and metaphorical approach takes something as pure and guiltless as a butterfly, then ruptures it and ruins it to show the disastrous consequences of love, hope and transformation gone wrong.
4. Little Mix – Wings
Little Mix’s #1 single Wings carries a passionate and inspirational message about using the butterfly’s symbolic transformation.
As the butterfly transitions from a crawling caterpillar to a rainbow-winged creature of the skies, Wings encourages you to flourish and become whoever or whatever you want, despite the people around you putting you down and thinking you’ll fail.
Powerful and memorable lines like, “Mama told me not to waste my life, she said spread your wings my little butterfly,” are empowering to anyone frightened by the big changes they’re facing.
Little Mix strengthen their butterfly sentiment with a flawless message of rising above your enemies; “Your words don’t mean a thing, I’m not listening, they’re just like water off my wings.”
5. Lana Del Rey – Happiness Is A Butterfly
This captivating yet sombre track compares happiness to a butterfly; a fleeting, elusive moment that flickers and flutters beyond reach.
Lana’s dream-stained chorus, “Happiness is a butterfly, try to catch it, like, every night, it escapes from my hands into moonlight,” eventually leads to her own transformation, “I was one thing, now I’m being another.”
But Lana beclouds her song with the feeling that change is not constant or easy, finding herself further away from happiness than where she was to begin with.
Her song is crafted to be comforting to anyone who sadly feels their happiness and innocence wavering and fluttering further away.
6. MAX & Ali Gatie – Butterflies
Max & Ali Gatie’s Butterflies is a song about falling in love and being overcome by the childlike butterfly feeling in your stomach.
The duo’s fresh, uplifting track depicts the summery atmosphere of young love, drawing upon every essence of relationships budding with cuteness and excitement.
Their lines “you could give me chills on a summer day, when we’re laying still but you make my heart race,” and “when you walk into the room, I’m as nervous as the day I met you,” perfectly encompass everything about that butterfly sensation.
7. Shinedown – The Crow & the Butterfly
The Crow & The Butterfly is a powerful, nostalgic blues-rock ballad which places the writer in the character of ‘the crow’ and his lost lover as ‘the butterfly’.
Shinedown use this contrasting metaphor to show that it is hopeless and cruel to ‘chase the butterfly’, to stop someone else from transforming and flourishing as an individual, when ultimately you’re both destined for different things.
Like Mariah Carey’s Butterfly, Shinedown writes about the transition of painfully letting someone go for their sake, not yours. Even though it will undoubtedly leave you feeling tangled and lost, you know that staying flightless would be more detrimental to you both.
8. Dolly Parton – Love Is Like A Butterfly
This vintage Dolly Parton tune is reminiscent of young, light-hearted romance whirled together with the peace of nature’s changing seasons and the overwhelming joy of companionship.
Love Is Like A Butterfly glistens with sunny and spring-flushed butterfly references like, “Your laughter brings me sunshine…together we belong like daffodils and butterflies,” and “Love makes your heart feel strange inside, it flutters like soft wings in flight,” – lines that are as timeless as they are evocative.
Parton’s song is optimistic in its wild sense of transformation and adventure, but with the delicate, natural sound allusive of life in early spring.
The symbolism of the butterfly might follow you to the places you least expect.
Whenever you’re struck with the impulse to reinvent yourself, or find yourself standing stuck between an ending and a new beginning, the music inspired by butterflies is vast and resonant to everyone’s experience, with sounds as delicate or as destructive as nature itself to help you find your wings.