3 Harry Styles Songs That Involve Fruit, Even Though They’re Not Really About Fruit
Harry Styles is no stranger to good lyrics. Not just catchy — although he can deliver on that too — but he comes up with meaningful and wonderfully fun songwriting. And it doesn’t always have to equal serious or deep songs. Styles has churned out three songs that are named after fruit, and they range from somber to just pure fun. But none of them are actually about fruit.
‘Kiwi’
Coming off of Styles’ debut solo album, Harry Styles, “Kiwi” was a risque song with an infectious tune. It really gives fans a classic rock vibe with a heavy, aggressive beat.
The chorus goes:
She’s driving me crazy, but I’m into it, but I’m into it / I’m kinda into it / It’s getting crazy, I think I’m losing it, I think I’m losing it / Oh, I think she said ‘I’m having your baby, it’s none of your business.’
At the time, the whole “I’m having your baby” part was the topic of many conversations: is this real? Did Styles have a secret baby somewhere?
The answer was no, it was just a funny line that he and the other songwriters went with.
“It started out as a joke, now it’s one of my favorite songs,” he said on BBC Radio One, according to Evening Standard. “It’s one of the first ones I wrote for the album when I was getting out a lot of energy… I hadn’t written in a long time and this is what came out of it.”
Interestingly enough, the word “Kiwi” isn’t mentioned in the song at all. So it could be inspired or aimed at an imaginary New Zealander, or be something else top secret.
‘Watermelon Sugar‘
Unlike “Kiwi,” “Watermelon Sugar” actually says the title of the song over and over again, and it’s truly the summer song fans didn’t know they needed. Which is funny, considering it came out with his second album, Fine Line, in December.
As to what it’s about, it also isn’t about watermelons, despite singing the word a ton in the song. While on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, he shared:
“It’s kind of about that initial euphoria of when you start seeing someone, you start sleeping with someone or just being around someone and you have that excitement about them.”
The second verse goes:
Strawberries on a summer evenin’/ Baby, you’re the end of June / I want your belly and that summer feelin’/ Getting washed away in you.
If that sounds rather sexual, it’s because it most likely is.
While interviewed by Zane Lowe, Styles wouldn’t confirm or deny that the song was about oral sex. Or as Lowe put it, “the joys of mutually appreciated oral pleasure.” However, with that verse and Styles’ post-chorus singing, “I just wanna taste it, I just wanna taste it,” it’s safe to assume, along with everyone else, that it is.
‘Cherry‘
Last but not least, “Cherry,” which is also off of his second album, has a fruit-inspired name. The meaning behind the song is, at its purest, about a breakup. More specifically, it’s about his breakup with model Camille Rowe, who is heard at the end speaking French.
While this is another fruit-song that doesn’t say the title in the song, “Cherry” might have been used as a combination of “Harry” and “Camille,” or another reason entirely. But Styles has talked about the song itself.
“I wanted to be true to [the breakup]. I wanted it to be true to how I was feeling then, in that moment,” Styles told Lowe in that same interview. “It was all part of being more open and not like, ‘I don’t care.’ You get petty when something’s not going the way that you want, and ‘Cherry’ is pathetic, in a way.”
Styles is referring to the fact that the song does have jealousy throughout, with the first verse going:
I, I confess I can tell that you are at your best / I’m selfish so I’m hating it / I noticed that there’s a piece of you in how I dress / Take it as a compliment.
Styles also told Lowe that the night he wrote “Cherry,” he was stuck in his head about what he wanted the song to be. He wanted to make more of a “radio record,” unlike his first album but was urged to instead write whatever he felt was right. And “Cherry” was born.
While Styles has said that he doesn’t mean to make fruit-inspired song titles, he does so anyway. Fingers crossed that HS3 has more. A strawberry or lemon one perhaps? Maybe orange, although nothing rhymes with it.
