Dinosaur Park is a single in Owl City’s Coco Moon Album that follows the storyline of Adam reminiscing on the place in ‘South Dakota’ known as Dinosaur Park.
The crux and theme of this song comes from believing that the Dinosaurs within the park have the ability to animate and experience the world when no one is around, similar to the toys in Toy Story, except without all the drama and just the fun. He introduces this idea initially with how the ‘Brontosaurus has a subtle glint her eye’, and this metaphor establishes Adam’s belief, likely when he was younger, that life potentially resides within the Dinosaur statue. It displays emotions, still waiting for the moonlight ‘when no one’s around.’ The fact that Adam can distinguish between the dinosaur’s gender also gives insight into this clearly being a child imposing his imagination as to what the dinosaur looks like, in the park it is unlikely dinosaurs have features that indicate which gender they are. However, because dinosaurs no longer exist in the real world and can be a particular love for children, young Adam uses his imagination to make his trip to this Dinosaur Park like visiting real animals in the zoo.
Adam continues to relish in the idea of these dinosaurs being real as the song continues singing ‘Under the Moonlight’ suggesting that it is under the beautiful starry night when they are given the opportunity to properly flourish and become alive. This then nicely ties to the synthetic melodies of the song beginning to pick up as it enters the chorus. ‘When some type of magic fills the air’ and when the song is fully endowed in its beat and chorus you also begin to experience Adam’s own imagination and how he felt when he was younger, firm in the belief that these dinosaurs must be interacting and talking after dark. He acknowledges as an adult that none of this is real, though he’d still like to ‘make believe’ with all of his heart because the feeling of visiting Dinosaur Park was magical and real to him.
I think the message and theme of the song are beautiful and continue to be quite strong. My issue with older Owl City songs is the choruses tend to repeat themselves quite often but here he focuses much more on verse. To prevent the chorus from becoming repetitious he adds a bit more to the initial chorus with phrases like “When the moon’s sitting pretty above rapid city there’s much more than meets the eye.’ While the song still does repeat the chorus a bit too much and overstays its welcome, there are some nice verses he adds that allow us to understand more deeply what Dinosaur Park means to him as the metaphor of the moon again could suggest that it is the thing which gives the Dinosaurs the power to move around in the dark at night. Or, instead, it is the moon’s very presence that gives the Dinosaurs the courage to begin to move about, the moon being a sign that lets the Dinosaurs know all the humans have dispersed and they are free to roam the earth until morning. Both interpretations extend Adam’s childlike thoughts and personally as a listener the melody makes me feel and believe the same things he does.
Overall, the song is an amazing addition to the Coco Moon album and expands on the album’s message in which he uses supernatural elements to describe a vacation, usually, one he’s experienced himself.
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