Lemonheads

I was writing a song and intended to call it “Bittersweet”. I don’t usually name songs before they’re finished, but I knew what this one was going to be about. I had the first few lines, but I couldn’t figure out what to write after them.

There were words that I knew would make sense in the song, but the lines weren’t all the same length. The beat just wasn’t working. I was left with a page full of seemingly random lines about confusion and decisions and life being bittersweet.

It's kind of this crazy bittersweet thing I've got going on

Can't go right, but hell, I can't go wrong

I sent all the lines and pieces I had so far to a friend of mine. After reading what I had so far, he said: “It sounds good, but why don’t you add more taste things, so it sounds like you’re describing life along with a sour candy?” My first reaction was to be a smart-aleck grammarian and ask him if he meant “adjectives” instead of taste “things”. But perplexity consumed me instead. .

My life, a sour candy? I didn’t know where he could have come up with it. The song was about sourness, I supposed, but candy?

I thought about it. After a few moments’ contemplation, I realized he was right. Not only did my song need more “taste orienting adjectives”, so did my life story.

I told him my life was like a certain sour candy: a Lemonhead. And it fits perfectly. My life is like a bag of Lemonheads.

When you first reach into the bag of Lemonheads and put one in your mouth, it’s sour. It's disgusting. You want to take it out. Why would you want to keep something so bitter in your mouth? You could choose to spit it out, but perhaps out of pure curiosity, you keep it in there for a while.

It’s really not good for a while. But if you just keep it in your mouth, eventually the sour part dissolves and you get to the sweet part. And the sweet part may not be as big as the sour part, but it’s really good. In fact, it’s delicious.

This great tasting, sugary sweetness? It makes the whole sour part worth it.

So you reach into the bag again, and you pull out another little yellow candy, and you put it in your mouth and wait for the sweet part. You may grimace through the sourness. You might want to spit it out again. You may wish the whole thing was sweet.

But when you get to the center, you realize you’d never enjoy it so much if you didn’t go through to have the sour part first.