When I was a kid I had a love-hate relationship with fruit. On one hand, it was unpredictable—sometimes it was sweet, sometimes it was sour, sometimes it was squishy and mushy, other times it felt like I was eating a rock. On the other hand, as a child my mom didn’t want us to rot our teeth as kids, so it truly became nature’s candy for me.
In honor of fruit, for being there for me when sugar was not, here are four songs whose titles are fruit centered.
Strawberry Wine by Noah Kahan
My second favorite fruit—that only falls behind seedless watermelon due to the plethora of seeds—is strawberries. Whenever we went to Topaz Farm as a kid, I would be treated to the joy of a box of fresh strawberries and honey sticks.
“Strawberry Wine” by Noah Kahan is a folk song that is extremely comforting. The song depicts themes of lost love and melancholy with storytelling and a soulful voice. It’s about a relationship between two incompatible people. The overall theme of the song can be interpreted as reminiscing on bittersweet memories and longing for a past love that can never be reclaimed.
He sings “I’m in love with every song you’ve ever heard” but quickly follows it up with “If I could lose you, I would / We buried your bones in plywood.” This is extremely poetic but soul crushing; you can feel in the words the love he carries for a person even though he knows it won’t work out. The narrator would rather forget the pain of losing his loved one, even if it means burying their memories deep within themselves.
There is a constant theme of wanting to repress and push down one’s painful memories. “Strawberry wine, and all the time we used to have / Those things I miss, but know are never comin’ back.” Kahan’s voice is calming, but you can feel the desperation through his words. Strawberry wine is known for its intense sweetness, and using it as a metaphor for a failing relationship is very fitting. The song is extremely saccharine and can almost be mistaken for a love song if you don’t look at the lyrics.
The loving demeanor the song has makes you wish it was a love song. “No thing defines a man like love that makes him soft / And sentimental like a stranger in the park / For a few moments, I see you.” It suggests that love has the ability to break down everyone, revealing their hidden depths and emotions, highlighting the profound impact of love on the human experience and every person’s craving for it. But it adds a layer of heartbreak to the song because these two people that share these intimate moments together couldn’t stay with each other.
The song ends with the line, “If I was empty space, and you were a formless shape, we’d fit / But love leaves little runway, and every time we run straight over it.” This phrase is repeated and truly shows how the narrator and the person they had a failed relationship with are completely incompatible. I interpret the empty space and formless shape as them having to lose every part of themselves to have a relationship.
“Strawberry Wine” seems like such a loving song on the surface, but from a listen-through, Kahan really paints a picture of what it is like to be in a failing relationship. You can feel the heartache in his words. The pain he feels is so real and is shown so beautifully.
Passionfruit by Drake
I love passion fruit. It’s sweet and tart when it’s fresh while also being a good source of vitamin A.
“Passionfruit” by Drake was a no-brainer to add to this list. It is definitely one of his most popular songs and deserves that title. The song reached the number eight spot on Billboard Top 100.
The song is about trying to maintain trust in a long-distance relationship. The chorus, “Passionate from miles away / Passive with the things you say / Passin’ up on my old ways / I can’t blame you, no, no” especially shows this.
Throughout the song he expresses how he can’t find trust or faithfulness in the relationship. This is particularly clear in the lyrics, “Harder buildin’ trust from a distance / I think we should rule out commitment for now / ‘Cause we’re fallin’ apart.” The song ends with him advising her to end the relationship.
Though Drake’s lyrics are phenomenal, his voice and especially the instrumental ties this song together. The instrumentals are extremely hypnotic and are by far the best instrumental-wise on this list. I love the tempo and pacing of the song.
The song in general just feels like summer to me. It gives me a warm, content feeling like sitting at the beach or by the pool. It definitely deserves its popularity, and if you have never listened to it, I highly recommend the song.
Blueberry Hill by Fats Domino
For me blueberries are hit or miss, but the association I bestowed upon them with the sense of summer overrides the fact that a third of the time they are too squishy. “Blueberry Hill” was originally written by Vincent Rose in 1940. Since then, it has been covered hundreds of times by artists like Elvis Presley, Louis Armstrong, and my personal favorite, Fats Domino.
This song is an old classic recounting a love he found on Blueberry Hill: “The moon stood still / And lingered until / my dream came true.” This line stood out to me because it’s a very cute depiction of waiting for your lover.
He immediately draws you in with a remorseful line, “But all those vows we made / Were never to me.” The song pulls you through a loop, and the sweet love song is simply a memory of what once was.
The bridge of the song, “Though we’re apart / You’re part of me still / For you were my thrill / On Blueberry Hill,” is such a sad testament to his failed love, and Domino’s voice truly does it justice. He has an old-time swagger to his voice that makes the song sound perfect.
This song may not be as depressing as the others in this column, but it has its own unique atmosphere to it. The song sounds happy with upbeat instrumentals and Domino’s vintage voice. With Fats Domino’s cover of the song, he set a standard for rock and roll; his cover reached number two for three weeks on the Billboard Top 40 charts in 1956. This version was ranked number 82 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.
Orange by Big Thief 
Oranges truly are one of the best fruits, with the tartness of the citrus mixed with its distinct sweetness. They were one of my favorites as a kid. I would be blessed with an orange in my lunch box every time I had a packed lunch. The mix of raw bitterness and sweet tang of this fruit is perfectly depicted in “Orange” by Big Thief.
The song depicts love and loss, stating orange is the color of the singer’s love. The main singer of the band, Adrianne Lenker, has a soft voice that really sells the song. Her voice shakes, and you can feel the grief within every word.
In the song, the love the two have for each other is raw and soft but also extremely fragile, with one of the second lines being, “Fragile orange wind in the garden / Fragile means that I can hear her flesh / Crying little rivers in her forearm.” The song switches from the soft tone in the next line when the singer states that this fragility means that she mourns her lover’s death.
The chorus repeats the phrase, “Lies in her eyes,” implying the lack of truthfulness within their relationship. This could indicate the singer is being deceived or betrayed by her partner. I interpret this as the betrayal she is feeling with the death of her love.
The third verse is by far my favorite because of the passion and vulnerability it excretes. The line, “Hound dogs crowing at the stars above / Pigeons fall like snowflakes at the border,” gives a sense of disarray and disorder in the relationship. Then you hear, “She kneels down and holds the frozen dove / Moon drips like water from her shoulder,” with the dove implying the death of her partner, in my opinion. Doves often symbolize peace, freedom and love, so the fact the bird is frozen implies she has lost it but it is still there, frozen like a memory. This can be interpreted as a reflection of the pain the singer witnesses their partner experiencing.
The final chorus trades “lies” with “flies” from her eyes, possibly representing the truth her relationship lacked even in her lover’s final moments. The flies might suggest the presence of death of her love or the untruthfulness the relationship had.
The last line is a copy of the first verse: “Fragile is that I mourn her death/As our limbs are twisting in her bedroom.” Her tone is less high-pitched and desperate; instead, it is lower and colder as if she truly is saying goodbye.
This song perfectly balances this playlist just like oranges balance a fruit basket. Like most songs with fruit titles, the song is about lost love, but it feels more sore then the others. The sorrow about the aching loss she feels about losing her partner echoes in the song, and the shaking voice makes me feel so wistful; it is so angelically beautiful.
Like a good playlist, a fruit basket is a mix of fruit. A good balance of sweet and sour keeps the listener coming back for more
