Spectra computed with the LRC-ωPBE and OT-LRC-ωPBE functionals are in excellent agreement with experiment, both in terms of the bandshape and the position of λ max . For the OT functional, in particular, the band maximum differs from experiment by < 0.1 eV, which is insignificant compared to the effect of vibrations on the vertical excitation spectrum. (These are described here by means of classical sampling.) Such a difference is also small in comparison to typical basis-set effects in TD-DFT excitation energies. The band maximum of the spectrum computed with LRC-ωPBE is redshifted by 0.25 eV with respect to experiment but overall is still a reasonable match, whereas the TD-BH&HLYP result is significantly blue-shifted (by 0.6 eV). This is not unusual for functionals that contain such a large fraction of exact exchange. The use of long-range corrected (LRC) functionals in aqueous-phase TD-DFT calculations is necessary in order to avoid contamination of the spectrum by a plethora of spurious, low-energy charge-transfer states. The presence of such states drives adds considerably to the cost of the calculation but can also impact lineshapes, via spurious intensity borrowing. Functionals such as BH&HLYP with a larger-than-normal fraction of exact exchange have also been used to avoid this problem, 66 but they also tend to overestimate valence excitation energies, which are pushed closer to the Hartree-Fock limit. (In that limit, excitation energies are overestimated by 0.8 eV or more, on average. ) LRC functionals also have a tendency to overestimate valence excitation energies, as compared to functionals such as B3LYP or PBE0 with 20-25% exact exchange, although the overestimation is less severe than it is with BH&HLYP. These are general observations based on benchmark statistical assessments, but they hold perfectly for the present system.