Pineapple Head by Crowded House
Pineapple Head (Clip)

“Pineapple Head,” written by Neil Finn, was included on Crowded House’s 1993 album Together Alone. The image on the left is from the cover of the CD single of “Pineapple Head” that was available in the U.K. and Australia.

Neil Finn talked about the origins of the song in an interview with David Hepworth in the June 1994 issue of Mojo Magazine.

DH: “How do you start a song?”

NF: “I basically rely on getting my first few lines by just singing something and writing it down and not thinking about it at all. So initially I get just a natural image like sky, sea, sun, earth and then something very domestic like washing. The juxtaposition of those things is endlessly interesting.”

DH: “Can you remember the process afterwards?”

NF: “‘Pineapple Head’ is an obvious example. It started with my son Liam who had a fever. He was delirious and I was standing by with a cloth to cool him down and he just started talking about all these things. ‘Pineapple Head! Pineapple Head!’ Then he said ‘detective is flat’ and ‘getaway car’. So instead of staying there and doing what a father should do I ran downstairs and committed it to a song. Until my wife Sharon came in and looked at me in horror and said, ‘What are you doing here?’ At the time you’ve got to go. There’s enough times when the idea pops into your head and you’re not on the ball enough to write it down. Liam’s 11 and I’ve exploited him mercilessly over the years. He wrote the line ‘here comes Mrs. Hairy Legs’ in ‘Chocolate Cake.’”

DH: “So does ‘Pineapple Head’ mean anything?”

NF: “‘Pineapple Head’ has the least meaning in the literal sense of any of the songs on the record, but in a strange way for me it all makes perfect sense. Line by line anyway. And the chorus is put over from the point of view of a fever, a virus, inhabiting somebody. ‘I’ll play you like a shark and I’ll clutch at your heart and come flying like a spark to inflame you.’ The rest of it’s just a stream of consciousness delirium put down on paper.”

Here are the complete lyrics:

Pineapple Head

Detective is flat
No longer is always flat out
Got the number of the getaway car
Didn’t get very far
As lucid as hell
These images moving so fast
Like a fever
So close to the bone
I don’t feel too well

And if you choose
To take that path

I will play you like a shark
And I’ll clutch at your heart
I’ll come flying like a spark
To enflame you

Sleeping alone
For pleasure, the pineapple head
It spins and it spins
Like a number I hold
Don’t remember if she was my friend
It was a long time ago

And if you choose
To take that path

I will play you like a shark
And I’ll clutch at your heart
I’ll come flying like a spark
To enflame you

Sleeping alone
For pleasure, the pineapple head
It spins and it spins
Like a number I hold
Don’t remember if she was my friend
It was a long time ago

And if you choose
To take that path
Would you come to make me pay?