Harry Styles is finally setting the Watermelon Sugar record straight.
The pop superstar offered some brief but explicit insight into the meaning of his 2020 smash while performing in Nashville, Tennessee, last Friday.
“This song is about ... it doesn’t really matter what it’s about,” Harry told the Bridgestone Arena crowd, as seen in video footage of the show. “It’s about, uh, the sweetness of life.”
Moments later, he cheekily added, “It’s also about the female orgasm, but that’s totally different. It’s not really relevant.”
Watermelon Sugar was released last year as the fourth single from Harry’s 2019 album Fine Line.
The song’s title alludes to Richard Brautigan’s 1968 post-apocalyptic novel, In Watermelon Sugar, a copy of which the singer has said was displayed on a table in the studio during the Fine Line recording sessions. The accompanying music video (above) showed the singer nibbling on watermelon slices at a beachside picnic with a comely entourage.
Fans and critics, however, have taken it upon themselves to offer up provocative interpretations of the lyrics, which include lines like: “I want your belly, and that summer feeling,” and “I just wanna taste it, watermelon sugar high.”
Actor Katherine Heigl, however, had a more literal take, revealing last year that she thought the song was simply “about watermelons and sugar.”
Harry, who is dating actor and director Olivia Wilde, has previously shrugged off the speculation around the playful innuendo.
When Apple Music’s Zane Lowe pressed him on whether the song was about “the joys of mutually appreciated oral pleasure” in 2019, he replied, “Is that what it’s about? I don’t know.”