Lemon Tree by Post Malone
An analysis of a song that tells you when life gives you lemons, burn down the tree.
By: Jenna Manderioli
Twelve Carat Toothache Deluxe album cover. Photo via Spotify.
This week I’m finally bringing you someone other than a country artist! If you didn’t know, American rapper and singer Post Malone released his fourth studio album, Twelve Carat Toothache on June 3, 2022. Post Malone is easily a Generation Z favorite, and this is his first album in almost 3 years!! The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, Post Malone featured numerous rising artists in the album which definitely helped with its success, including Doja Cat, The Weeknd, Gunna, and The Kid Laroi.
The album was also strategically ordered, as when you listen to it in order, the songs blend into one another. It’s a nice touch that to me, illustrates an album as more of a story. I personally think Pink Floyd set the standard for doing this beautifully, and Post definitely took after that style. While Twelve Carat Toothache has very catchy, well-crafted radio-style songs with the featured artists, there are also solo songs on it where Post really dives deep and reflects on emotions of bitterness.
Hidden Fruit in the Album
Lemon Tree, co-written with Billy Walsh, Louis Bell, Charlie Handsome, and Brian Lee, is Post’s personal spin on the phrase “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.” It’s a bitter take on life and accepting what you have and learning to make the most out of it or, in Post’s case, start over.
The song begins slow, with a lot of high-pitched sharp notes on a simple guitar strum and what seems like a wispy, creepy wind. It insinuates an instant gloomier mood. It’s an interesting blend of natural guitar but also interesting noise.
Post takes us to a gloomy, dark bedroom with his opening lyrics.
Couldn't fall asleep all night, I tried with all my might, I thought I knew what you want. It isn’t all that nice, but I guess it will suffice, It’s hard to know what you want.
Nothing creates a more restless feeling than thinking you know someone. These lyrics insinuate this person isn’t necessarily a good influence in Post’s life, and my first association with the word “nice” is “naughty and nice” similar to a tone of “sweet and sour.” He introduces this first play on “sweet and sour” relating to a Lemon with this:
Could you be? A little less sour, we're rotting by the hour, And my heart's rotten too
This is the first reference to the play on the idea of a “lemon” representing this relationship. Lemon is a sour fruit, and if a lemon is representing this relationship, rotting by the hour insinuates the relationship is fading out. Post adding that his heart is rotten shows something really isn’t right, and he feels like he has been rotted out in the relationship.
via @postmalone on Instagram.
The line “Every film I watch I’m on the side of the bad guy” really made me think. So much of relationship issues today are ridiculously black-and-white and two-sided. There are thousands of movies, books, and especially songs where people talk about their relationship problems or pain, but no one talks about “the other side.” What I mean by this is everything Post watches/sees around him paints his role in the relationship as “the bad guy” when he has his own side of the story. This is a phenomenon that I don’t think is talked about enough, genuinely. It seems that Post is in a brainwashed relationship where he is consistently painted as the one in the wrong, so he urges the person he’s talking to in the song to “turn around and show [him] me something better.”
I’ve seen tons of people leaving comments on Malone’s social media posts talking about Lemon Tree with “BETTTRRRR,” or “BEYTRR,” referring to the way Post sings the word “better.” Post has a specific way of adding vibrato to his voice that he’s used in all of his albums. There’s really no way to describe it– it’s such an authentic and unique noise to him. If you listen to the song you’ll hear it, and if you’re a Posty fan too, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
But the interesting thing is the use of this vibrato and the way he pronounces “better” sounds like the word “bitter” at the same time. Was this intentional? If Post is a musical play-on-words genius, then it just has to be. And if it isn’t, it opened the door to a deeper interpretation of its meaning.
Some Fruit for Thought
This next part is where he really drives the fruit analogy home.
Some people got an apple, Some people got a tangerine, Looking around and all I see is people happy with what they're given, Life is pretty sweet I'm told. I guess I'm just sh*t outta luck growing a lemon tree
Listening to this section was what made me say “I HAVE to write a lyric analysis on this. This is so clever.” There are multiple ways the uses of these specific fruits can be interpreted.
The saying “Comparing Apples to Oranges” refers to the idea that people are very different and you can’t really compare them or put them in the same category. Post lists different people by saying “some have apples, some have tangerines”. But he brings these type of people together in a sort of subcategory by saying the people with apples and tangerines are happy, saying life is sweet. Both of these fruits are sweet, while his lemon makes his life sour.
He’s at a point in his life where things may be feeling sour (pun intended) and his life is like a lemon tree and thinks he needs to restart or develop a new mentality in order to do better or be better for his partner so he’s gonna burn down the lemon tree and grow something better.
Play on the phrase “when life gives you lemons… make lemonade.. making something sweeter out of life, lemons are bitter.
So I actually want to argue something here. When I first listened to the song, it made complete sense. Post is gonna burn down his lemon tree because he wants a clean slate and a sweet life. But if the symbolism of the lemon was supposed to coincide with the quote “when life gives you lemons,” then burning down the tree is the exact opposite of what he should have done.
Making lemonade out of lemons makes life sweeter, it takes what you’re given and makes it into something better. Instead of this mentality, Post kind of says “let me burn down what I have and try to completely re-invent myself despite what life gave me.”
According to Tree Symbolism, a lemon tree itself symbolizes a lot of useful things that Post could have hypothetically applied to his life if he didn’t burn down the tree. First, a lemon tree symbolizes cleansing. The fruit It is believed to be able to purity things and cleanse the body and mind of negative energy. Next, it symbolizes abundance. Abundance. It represents having a life with more than enough and will create a blessed, plentiful lifestyle. Lastly, it is a symbol of healing. It is meant to protect the body and soul and keep it safe. Even the home of the lemon tree owner is said to be protected from negative energy.
So while Post purely viewed his lemon tree as bitter and hopeless, he could have used it to cleanse out that bitterness and negativity and keep his home (soul) safe. He (all hypothetically) burnt down his path to healing. And maybe make some lemonade first, Post!
Now I'm NOT at all trying to take away from the cleverness or beauty of the song, I don’t appreciate its meaning any less and neither should you, it’s just an interesting way to view the perspective.
The Battle
Next, Post sets the scene of what feels like a street fight. He describes being knocked over, kicked around, as if he's loosing this hypothetical fight. The line "Came from the dirt, back in the ground, when I die" brings the listeners back to the perspective that Post's life is a hypothetical tree in the ground, growing in the dirt. Even when a tree dies, according to Take a Yard, its roots can remain underground for about seven years and could even keep growing. In a way, part of Post's "lemon tree" will still be underground even when he burns it down. He then concludes this verse with "Ima survive, I got my ways" Seeming like he's trying to convince himself and whoever he's talking to that he's got a plan to take control of his life again.
Still Deciding to Burn the Tree Down
The song concludes with a repetition of the chorus, and the music picks up a little bit. Not in a fast-paced way, as the tempo remain the same, but in more of an emotionally-charged way, that gives the listeners the feeling of Post really embarking on his feelings. The end of the song fades out with sounds of whispering the line "Grow me something better." It is definitely a common tactic in a lot of current music to create emphasis on a certain lyric or line with the repetition of it at the end of the song, and the tone that Post sings it gives the eerie feeling and expectation that he's almost turning a new chapter in his book of life, abandoning the sour relationship he's in, and is "growing something better" for himself because he wants a sweet life, not a sour one.
While I definitely analyzed this song from the symbolic perspective of a lemon tree for pure enjoyment, the point of the song and the clever analogy Post uses is evident: Life has been sour, he wants something sweet, he's stuck with a lemon tree of life, and when life gives you lemons, you make something sweeter out of it. For Post, he's getting rid of the lemons completely to achieve that. Whether the struggles in the song are hypothetical or not, I sure hope building a new tree of life is as "easy peezy lemon squeezy" as it was to write such a poetic song using fruit trees as a metaphor for taking control of your life.
