“Melon Cake” is the eighth track on Demi Lovato’s 2021 album ‘Dancing With the Devil…The Art of Starting Over.’ The song tells a very personal story about Demi’s eating disorder and how she was forced to maintain their ‘image’ for the public by their former label.
Demi Lovato announced their seventh studio album ‘Dancing With the Devil…The Art of Starting Over‘ released on April 2, 2021. This is their follow-up project to the 2017 album ‘Tell Me You Love Me.’ The album touches on their personal struggles with drug addiction and their near-fatal overdose in 2018.
Talking with Apple Music, Demi Lovato revealed the inspiration and background behind the track; “I used to eat melon cake on my birthday in place of an actual birthday cake. It was this watered-down, diet version of a birthday cake that was basically fat-free Cool Whip or coconut cream on top of a watermelon cut like a cake. It was never the vibe. The song is me saying goodbye to melon cake. That might seem insignificant to someone who hasn’t struggled with food issues, but for someone like me who has overcome that, I was stepping out of my comfort zone by eating actual birthday cake. It was a big step for me, and I wanted to celebrate it.”
Watch “Melon Cake” Music Video by Demi Lovato
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“Melon Cake” Lyrics Meaning and Song Review
Demi Lovato has opened up about their eating disorders and the restrictions their managers had on them to ‘protect’ their career. She talked about the feeling of running into the ground to maintain a certain image that the industry considered was appropriate. This obviously would have lead to the other problems she endured such as substance abuse and mental health issues.
In 2019, in an interview with Ashley Graham, Demi talked about how she developed their eating disorder and how their alleged recovery process lead to more issues;
“I thought the past few years was [my] recovery from an eating disorder when it actually was just [me] completely falling into it. And I just realized that maybe my symptoms weren’t as obvious as before, but it was definitely an eating issue.
I honestly think that’s kind of what led to everything happening over the past years, just like me thinking I found recovery when I didn’t and then living this kind of lie trying to tell the world I was happy with myself when I wasn’t.”
In 2020, in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres, Demi opened up about how their former manager took extreme steps to ensure that Demi maintained their ‘body image’:
“If I was in my hotel room at night, they would take the phone out of the room so I couldn’t call room service. If there was fruit in my room, they took it out because that’s extra sugar. Like, we’re not talking about brownies, and cookies, and candy, it was fruit. For many years I didn’t even have a birthday cake, I had a watermelon cake. I just really wanted birthday cake.”
In 2019, Demi Lovato was fortunate enough to change their manager to Scooter Braun, who also works with artists like Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande. Later, she told Bustle;
“I used to have people watching me the night before a photoshoot to make sure that I didn’t binge or eat and be swollen the next day. It’s just a totally different world now. … I don’t prepare for photoshoots, even. I can eat Subway for breakfast.”
So, now it makes sense why this song is so personal to them and equally important.
In the lyrics to “Melon Cake,” Demi Lovato sings about how their life was retrained by their former management and how it snowballed into bigger issues in their life even to the extent of their near-fatal overdose in 2018.
She calls their former life a game of cat and mouse–never winning, never losing, just a constant battle. And she recalls a time when one of their assistants actually got fired for buying them a chocolate bar.
The line “I had too much of my fill” says that she has had enough of all these restrictions. But more importantly, it is a clever backhanded slap at their former manager Phill McIntyre, who was the person behind all these restrictions on their life.
So, simply their strength to say no to the ‘melon cake’ is a massive win for them and their health. No one has to suffer about how to live their life.
If you feel like you have an eating disorder and need help, do not hesitate to reach out!
Let us hear what you think about this song in the comments below. Check out the complete lyrics on Genius.
The article is very good, but Demi uses they/them pronouns! They don’t use she/her pronouns, so could you please fix sentences which contain expressions like “*her* disorder” (it should be THEIR disorder), “personal to *her*” (personal to THEM), “*her* life” (THEIR life) or “her manager” (THEIR manager). Thank you so much ^^
Changed.
Thank you