My favorite Glass Animals song, “Melon and the Coconut,” starts with a laugh from a video and a dreamlike first few notes to resemble the rest of the album. The album Dreamland was primarily written by frontman, Dave Bayley, after How to Be a Human Being, their second studio album. In the article “Glass Animals frontman Dave Bayley: ‘My childhood best friend tried to take a gun into a school’,” Roison O’Connor writes about an interview with Bayley and remarks about the end of How to be a Human Being which is “Agnes,” a more personal song, inspired Dreamland to be written by Bayley with more personal experiences. Similar to How to Be a Human Being, where the album cover had many people on the cover, Dreamland has Bayley’s face with some prominent symbols in the songs surrounding him. This shows how this album is focused on Bayley’s experiences. “Melon and the Coconut” conceptually is a little strange. In the Genius article on this song, they report Bayley wrote it around an hour after taking a nap. When they tried to add to the song and make it more complex, it ruined the simple charm.
In the music video “Glass Animals — Melon and the Coconut // dreamland home movies” posted by the Glass Animal account on Youtube, there are clips of different moments: hanging out with people and having fun mixed in with clips of Bayley taking a nap on the couch which he accidentally recorded. There are clips of Bayley finding out what fruit he is, people climbing on trains, someone climbing on a structure of an animal, and the Jenga game falling on someone. These clips have a static quality, adding to the nostalgia in the song and the album. The song depicts a melon and a coconut sitting in their apartment, discussing their relationship and breaking up. Melon is referred to in the song as “Melly” Coconut is called “Coco.” Along with the characters breaking up in their apartment, the nicknames humanize them.
The song starts with Melly and Coco sitting on the floor of their apartment. The two verses are the different fruits, discussing their relationship and breaking up. Coco speaks in the first verse. Coco starts with, “I can’t do this anymore/ Everything we’re doin’ just feels f*ckin’ cold.” After this, Coco makes many more references to explain how they are feeling and to support the argument of why they can’t be in this relationship anymore. Many of these references are to 90s pop culture, such as G.I. Joe, furthering the theme of 90s nostalgia in the album. Melly responds with seemingly a level of hurt and criticizes Coco’s decisions, blaming these actions on Coco’s fears rather than an actual desire to break up.
At the end of the song, in the band’s favorite line, Melly says, “Off-White Air Force Ones in boxes/You’re a f*cking coconut, can’t even put ’em on/ Even if you could, you couldn’t even pull ’em off.” This is also my favorite part of the song; it is an incredibly petty comment for Melly to make while also being funny to listen to. This can be interpreted in connection with what Melly says about Coco’s fears of getting older, and Coco’s attempt to wear Off-White Air Force Ones is their attempt at being more modern and trying to get back this youth. While the Dreamland album has a lot to do with youth and 90s nostalgia, “Melon and the Coconut” serves as both a song about a breakup and also a reminder that while it is important and fun to reflect on youth, it’s just as important to enjoy your life now. You have to live in the moment and become more comfortable with getting older.